Or as Girl Meets World would probably title it, “Girl Meets Getting Stuck on the Subway”. Speaking of Girl Meets World, I’ve said it before: People who are expecting this show to tackle stuff like abuse, sex, and drugs, please get a clue. For one thing, Boy Meets World almost never went over those things. I can’t actually think of a BMW drug episode, but maybe there’s one.

Second, it’s the Disney Channel. The Disney Channel has pretty much never covered super serious issues with its original programming. They do air stuff that covers some more serious stuff, but it’s never in its original series.

Third, the main character is like 12 or 13. Let’s review what happened to Cory on Boy Meets World when he was 12 and 13: He had to figure out the balance between school and father-son bonding time, lost an important gift his dad gave him when he didn’t even know it was important, thought he was turning into a werewolf, learned that no matter how ridiculous his hair looks at least Topanga still thinks he’s cool, and that if he actually put forth effort once in a while, he can actually do well at school. Know what they didn’t cover on that show when Cory was 12 and 13 years old? Sex, drugs, and abuse. The worst they got was when Shawn blew up that mailbox and the other time when his mom abandoned him.

I cannot stress enough that Boy Meets World is not and has never been Degrassi, which mixes silly plotlines with Super Serious ones on a regular basis. Boy Meets World did have its share of more serious episodes, but I don’t understand why so many people seem to be remembering it as this show that tackled all the heavy issues all the time. And BMW aired on ABC, whereas GMW is on Disney Channel, where their most serious original issues seem to be about bullying and not fitting in and liking boys, with the occasional “My best friend has betrayed me!” deal.

Well anyway, here’s the recap.

Shawn got a limo from his uncle Lazlo for New Year’s. Feeny runs into the house, needing cash to pay his cab driver with since all he has are traveler’s checks and it’s still 1995 so there’s no way for cabs to take checks.

Eric nabbed a date with supermodel Rebecca Alexa, who’s 2nd cousin to Eric’s friend Jason. I don’t know if Rebecca Alexa is a real model or not. I’m assuming not. Anyway they’re going to some fancy New Year’s thing so he’s looking forward to kissing her on tv in front of all of Philadelphia.

In a few seasons I will bring up this screenshot to make a very angry point about something.

Alan and Amy are going somewhere. Also this house is FULL of poinsettias. It’s ridiculous. It’s like Alan’s grocery store didn’t sell enough so he just took all the leftovers home and now there’s just poinsettias covering all available floorspace.

Amy laments her little boys growing up into men who go on New Year’s Eve dates, and reminsces about how when they were little they’d try to stay up late and fail. Eric complains about having to babysit Cory, and he apparently put raisins up Cory’s nose. GUH. As someone with an older sibling myself, let me just say OH BOO HOO YOU HAD TO BABYSIT. Being the younger sibling SUCKS. Nothing you ever do is special because your older sibling did it first. And if you manage to accomplish something your sibling never did, then they have to get super snarky and jealous about it. I think we should all go the Duggar family route – just have like 45 children, that way nobody ever notices when anybody else does anything so everyone just equally feels like unappreciated crap.

Anyway this would be a good time to bring up Morgan, who has not been mentioned since season 2.

UGH

Turner and Eli are spending a romantic New Year’s Eve together. Turner is sad about his luck with women, even though he scored a date with that attractive blonde teacher a few episodes ago.

A bunch of women then show up at his door. There’s Janine, who insults Turner and decides to make a lasagna, and then Val, who brought a pizza. We have never seen of nor heard of either of these women before.

Back with Cory, Shawn’s limo – which is actually a hearse – broke down. Coincidentally, Eric’s car broke down as well. Everyone’s stuck at the Matthews home.

Eric orders a cab for him and his date. Cory asks if they can share it, Eric refuses, until Rebecca Alexa says her older sister never shared anything with her either, and she never forgave her for that.

Cory ends up freaking out in the cab about the cab driver being a murderer or something, so they’re back in the house again.

Topanga suggests they just stay at the house and make popcorn balls, but Eric disapproves. Rebecca Alexa makes a sarcastic comment about taking the subway, so they take the subway.

Hey what’s that poster behind – OH MY GOD

FEENY!

The gang is about to disembark from the subway. Topanga asks what the rush is, since there’s still plenty of time before midnight. Then it gets out that Eric only wanted to go out with her to get a big kiss or something, and she leaves in a huff. The train immediately starts moving after she leaves.

I don’t, uh… what? I guess specifically she’s mad that he wanted to kiss her on television in front of people, but that was still weird how she’s just mad. And also that the subway doors stayed open for so long and then just abruptly closed like that.

Anyway the power in the train goes out, then comes back on. The train has stalled. They’re stuck on the subway! Noes! Stuck in the subway during the holidays! Just like that Full House episode. There’s a Hey Arnold episode where they get stuck on the subway, but that’s not a holiday episode. It’s really cool though because we find out Arnold’s crazy grandma is a master electrician and Helga has a HUGE rat phobia  and some sort of version of claustrophobia. Also a blind man’s guide dog gives birth to puppies.

So back on BMW:

Topanga remains optimistic. Cory asks why she’s so chipper tonight, wondering if she swallowed Sandy Duncan (hooray! Another outdated reference!) Topanga tells him she’s sick of always being the optimistic one. Kay.

Shawn has been exploring the other train cars. Someone apparently has gone into labor. And someone’s giving out crab cakes!

Also, this guy.

I thought it was Nick Cannon, but on second thought I think it’s that guy from the Amanda Bynes/Jennie Garth sitcom “What I Like About You.” To be fair, I only thought it was Nick Cannon before they showed his face all the way.

Back at… ugh, Turner’s plotline, the two women are making fun of Turner. Eli wants them to stay, Turner wants them to go. End scene.

Eric blames Cory for ruining his night. Eric also looks like Rick from Degrassi The Next Generation right now.

Shawn met some Catholic school girls who were impressed when he said his uncle is the pope. Shawn has like 83 uncles on this show so that wouldn’t surprise me if the pope was actually one of them.

Eli’s in a lady sandwich. Or is it an Eli sandwich?

Turner wants to leave, but there’s some weepy woman on his doorstep. They went on one date but she wants closure or something. Turner invites her in and then runs away. Go Turner.

Not Nick Cannon congratulates Cory on throwing a excellent paaaaaartaaaaaay. Everyone on the train are members of The Whitest Kids You Know and don’t know what a “paaaaaaaaartaaaaaaay” is. Seriously.

Also there’s a French maid, sailor, and Santa Claus/member of ZZ Top on the train.

Eric’s sad in the corner. Cory tries to apologize again. They bond over a shared memory of a babysitter who tried to curl Cory’s hair one New Year’s Eve. They say they’ve always had lousy New Year’s., but also that they were great. And this awesome paaaaaartaaaay is the greatest.

Eric kisses the French maid, misunderstanding when she asks if he wants a quiche.

Feeny’s back from vacation. He doesn’t have the money to pay for a cab again. He doesn’t want to just have the driver take him to a bank machine, because he thinks the cab driver is going to murder him or something – it’s the same driver from the cab that Cory freaked out about.

Shawn overhears this and thinks it’s great that Feeny is out of money again and needs to come crawling to him for help. Feeny says he’ll risk getting killed by the driver rather than ask Shawn for help. That’s cold, Feeny.

Oh hey the French maid (or caterer, as she’s called on imdb) played Cordelia on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

There’s not much to say about this episode. It actually kind of sucked. Cory and Eric didn’t really mend their relationship, since the issues they had only just came up in this episode, weren’t that dramatic, and were apparently resolved by the end anyway. No one learned through wacky events that you don’t need a perfect evening to have fun (I guess Eric sort of learned that? A little?)

It would’ve made WAY more sense to drop the Turner subplot and take that time to perhaps boost up Cory’s character more – maybe have him angst a bit about always ruining New Year’s for his brother, and how he’s not a popular guy, but then he somehow manages to unite all the people on their subway car to have a great time partying together. Hey Arnold did way better with the “trapped on the subway” thing and that episode was half as long as this one.

But seriously that Turner subplot UGH. It was so POINTLESS. We’ve never seen those women before, didn’t know Turner had women issues, never fixes those issues, and we’ll never see any of those women again anyway. I’d rather have seen Amy and Alan being boring adults at some party. Or heck just make the episode two minutes shorter and cut out Turner entirely.

In other news, if you’re tired of the terrible screenshots included in the Boy Meets World recaps (I know I am ;_;), or just have some money lying around your bank account that you don’t know what to do with, consider pledging to my Patreon page! Alternatively, you could just give me some Boy Meets World DVDs. That works too. [Also I swear I won't advertise the Patreon on every post.]

The day this episode premiered, the iTunes store reached 8.6 billion songs sold, and 1.8 billion applications downloaded. I’m sorry, I thought it would be neat to include an “also on this day” feature, but that’s all I could come up with after looking at one website. Ummm I guess it was also the 33rd anniversary of the death of Mao Tse-tung. This feature may not be a regular thing.

Um let’s see, Brian Lowry of Variety magazine, after viewing this episode, deemed the show a “one-hit wonder”. Jokes on you, Brian Lowry! Also this was the show’s “premiere” episode after the pilot had aired back in May.

Also, I’d like to give a well-deserved mention to The Swingle Singers. I didn’t mention it at all in the last review, but Glee throughout its run, particularly in the pilot, has some background music that’s often some classical piece, as performed vocally by an acapella group. That group is The Swingle Singers, and they NEVER get mentioned by anyone who works on the show despite them being kind of important to the feel of the show. No one’s even ever like “Oh by the way” about them. What a rip-off, eh? Well, lets just get into it already:

The episode starts almost the same as the first one did, with Schue driving into the school parking lot, with his broken-down car, as you won’t recall since I didn’t mention it in the last review.

He also changed his license plate to say “glee”, which is amazing because it means that not only was “glee” not already taken, but also that Schue somehow had the money to pay for a custom license plate. Or maybe it’s just a novelty plate. I don’t know if in Ohio you need to have your license number on the front and back license plate holders, or if you’re allowed to have a novelty plate on the front, and I don’t care to look it up.

Rachel accosts Schue in the parking lot, saying she found some sheet music in the library that will give her an opportunity to be featured heavily on vocals. This is assuming that the glee club ever actually uses sheet music, which I think they do once in the entire five seasons of the show.

Artie, Tina, and Mercedes also run into Schue, saying they’ve been working on some vocal runs. They demonstrate. They have put effort into trying to become better singers. They are the true heroes of glee club.

Schue then completely misses that Kurt is about to be thrown into a dumpster, like in the last episode.

I forget if Finn was in this opening part.

Why the heck isn’t random guitar guy in glee club?

Emma intentionally runs into Schue in the hallway (literally runs into him), he thanks her for helping him decide to stay in a job that will cause him to struggle to raise money to feed his child because teenagers are inspiring or something, and then cheerleader Quinn comes by and tells him that Sue wants to see him.

Sue gives Schue some tablets to help keep his strength up while he’s menstruating (seriously), and reveals that she has actually read the show choir rulebook and knows he needs 12 kids to qualify for Regionals. He has 6. Also he hasn’t read the rulebook for some reason. Actually he never reads the rulebook for like the whole series, I think. No wonder they keep losing.

Oh and Sue hates Schue.

Quinn is yelling at Finn for being in lame glee club when they have the opportunity to be the most popular kids in school. I can sort of buy that Finn would be super popular – even for the kids who don’t care that he’s football team’s star quarterback, he seems like he’s probably that guy who’s so harmlessly stupid that it’s kind of endearing to everyone else. Like the kid who tries hard, still gets it wrong, everyone laughs but feels bad for laughing, and then they go “Oh, honey.” But Quinn seems like a, well, a bitch. She’s probably got some people who pretend to like her just because she’s powerful, but I’d guess the majority of the school probably hates her for one reason or another.

Anyway, Rachel is “eavesdropping” on their conversation. This is a running thing in this show, someone “eavesdropping” on a private conversation, and by that I mean “standing at their locker listening to someone talk in a crowded hallway at school.”

Quinn tells Finn if he quits Glee, she’ll let him touch her breast, under the shirt but over the bra. Finn refuses, saying glee is fun and she has nothing to worry about. Quinn also yells at Rachel for eavesdropping and says she’ll never win Finn’s heart. Rachel assures Quinn she has nothing to worry about. Rachel is completely lying, as we will see later in this very episode.

Featuring Brad the Pianist in the back.

Schue has the group singing Chic’s “Le Freak”, which Schue refers to as “Freak Out” for some reason. They can’t do the simple choreography very well, and Mercedes objects to Rachel almost kicking her in the face, and also says the song is terrible. Mercedes had best shut her mouth, because there is nothing terrible about that song.

But the other kids agree with Mercedes, Kurt saying “It’s really gay”, which is meant to be funny because Kurt is obviously gay even though he’s not out yet. Artie yearns for some more modern music to perform. I don’t really understand the complaint here – I mean, Tina’s audition song was the most recent song that was performed in the last episode. Mercedes’s audition came out nine years earlier than Le Freak did. This is a huge problem on this show – the characters will just randomly decide to complain about how X genre is terrible or they want to sing Y, even though they had no problems with it earlier. One character later on is basically like “ugh, the 80s was terrible” even though about half of the songs he performed on the show were from the 80s. Ugh.

Schue and Terri are buying a house, because Terri’s sister Kendra told them to. Terri’s kind of crazy, but Kendra is like INSANE. To be fair we don’t see much of her so there’s not much of an opportunity for her to redeem herself, but man. You have no idea if you haven’t actually seen the show. Kendra also has three red-headed monster children and a very resigned, down-beaten husband.

Terri wants the best house there is, with a sun nook, a grand foyer, and a backyard full of baby Christmas trees so she can cut down her own every year as long as she lives. Schue insists they can’t afford a huge new house, but Terri doesn’t want a “used” house. She compromises by deciding not to take a house with a sun nook. Schue decides to get a second job. I would like to point out here also that Terri works 12 hours a week at her job at Linens’N’Things, so Schue is making pretty much all the sacrifices here in terms of money and time. I mean I know Terri’s pregnant, but even before they knew that she was only working 12 hours a week.

Schue’s shirt says “Ditch Plains”, not “Bitch Please”. Kind of a weird shirt to be wearing as a teacher either way.

Oh apparently the glee club has to sing at a school assembly and that’s why they’re rehearsing a disco song. They’re trying to recruit more members, I guess. Anyway Schue brought them a Kanye West song to sing for fun – “Gold Digger”. Finn is terrible so he refuses to take the lead solo, so Schue takes it instead. This is the first “Will Raps” segment of the show. Everybody hates it when he raps, but I don’t get why. He does pretty well with it, even if he is a 35 year old white guy. Mercedes and Artie also take lead parts on the song and KILL IT. Amber Riley and Kevin McHale need to record every hip-hop song in existence.

Later, Rachel is trying to throw up in the bathroom. Emma is for some reason not using the faculty washroom and finds her in there, gagging. Rachel’s trying to be thin and pretty like Quinn, even though she’s probably the same dress size as Quinn already. Emma pulls her into the guidance office for a chat.

It turns out Rachel’s trying to impress a guy (*sarcastic gasp*). She asks Emma if she can possibly know what it’s like to like a guy so much you want to lock yourself in your room and turn on sad music. Emma does.

Emma suggests Rachel try to find out what some of the guy’s interests are, see if they have anything in common. And maybe if they do, they’ll find themselves hanging out together and something unexpected might happen.

After the commercial break, we find Rachel and Finn in the principal’s office. They were caught doing something completely inappropriate in Sue’s office. “It just sorta… happened,” says Finn. Uh-oh. Rachel believes Sue is overreacting. Sue is. Sue always is.

See, Finn was apparently not feeling confident in his singing abilities, so Rachel tried to comfort him by telling him about Justin Timberlake. That’s a really weird comparison, because Justin Timberlake’s been performing since he was like 10, back in the 90s incarnation of the Mickey Mouse Club along with some nobodies named Britney Spears, Ryan Gosling, Keri Russell, J.C. Chasez, and Christina Aguilera.

But that conversation was just like “I’m not very talented.” “Well Justin Timberlake is an actor, singer, and owns his own clothing line!” That didn’t make any sense.

Also Finn doesn’t know who Justin Timberlake is. This is coming up now rather than when Mercedes called him “Justin Timberlake” in the last episode.

Anyway Rachel decides, rather than be embarrassed by disco music, they’d draw new kids to their glee club by print up fliers advertising the great talents who have come before who were also in glee club maybe.

I like that there’s an arrow explaining Robin Thicke. I had certainly never heard of him before 2013′s whole “Blurred Lines” madness, I’m sure those other high school kids wouldn’t have heard of him in 2009 either. I’m still not even sure what other songs he has besides “Blurred Lines”, actually.

Anyway that’s a terrible poster. Who’s going to join the glee club because of Justin Timberlake, Robine Thicke, and I think that’s Kelly Clarkson on the right? They should’ve put a picture of The Rock, Chuck Norris, and Natalie Portman. I don’t know if any of them were ever in glee club, but that would sure make people think.

Erm, well, they used Sue’s copy machine to make copies of the poster. She walked in and dropped her power smoothie.

The copy machine is only authorized for Cheerios-related use, and worries what would’ve happened to the program had the two teenagers somehow broken the machine. Schue, believing Sue to be overreacting, tells her to hold on a minute. Sue channels a Tumblr Social Justice blogger and says “I resent being told to hold on to anything, William. I will not be treated like a second-class citizen on because of my gender.” She says copy machines are SERIOUS BUSINESS and demands Finn and Rachel be “hobbled.”

Schue suggests the kids just pay for the copies they made. Principal Figgins agrees to this compromise, and asks Sue to clean up the mess she made, on account of half the janitors had to be fired due to the recession. Schue yells at the kids for betraying him, says the disco will go on, and tells them they can’t put up their posters. That last part I don’t get – if it recruits more members, what’s the big deal? The posters weren’t offensive or anything. And they’re already made.

WHOA hello.

Schue announces he’ll have to work more hours. Terri gets angry about that, even though he’s only doing it because she wants the huge house because she didn’t want to turn her craft room in the apartment they already live in, into a nursery. Schue volunteers to work at half-salary at nights as a janitor in the school.

Rachel has joined the celibacy club because Finn is in it. Shared interests and whatnot. For the first half hours, the boys and girls separate, then they come together to “share their faith.” All of the girls are cheerleaders. At least half the boys are football players. I think all of them, like Finn, only joined to “get into Quinn Fabray’s pants” (or their respective girlfriends’ pants). Jokes on them, since all of them only wear their cheerleading skirts all the time.

That guy in the background should’ve been a main character.

Weird-looking kid (who we later learn is named Jacob ben Israel; he is Jewish, if that name wasn’t a giveaway) says he thinks he’s gonna kill himself (seriously) because of sexual frustration, while random background guy makes hilarious facial expressions in agreement. He also makes a reference to premature ejaculation, and asks how the others deal with it. Finn says it’s not a problem for him.

In reality it’s a huge problem. The only thing that can ever stop him from erupting early is thinking of the time he hit a mailman during a driving lesson. It’s the greatest scene ever, I wish I could find a video of it to show you in its entirety. Instead I’ll settle for this gif that I am not able to just put in this blog, so here’s a link.

Right, well, the play “Immaculate Affection” aka “Make Room for Jesus w/balloons.” Rachel says celibacy doesn’t work and reveals that girls like sex. I don’t know about that first part – controlling your hormones and emotions and vowing not to have sex? That doesn’t work? Certainly there’s value in teaching kids about safe sex, but to say abstinence doesn’t work at all? Eh, well. “Studies show”, apparently.

Later that night(?), Schue’s cleaning the school. Emma finds him, having stayed late for SAT prep (she’s teaching, not receiving). They bond over… nothing. Emma reveals she has a big problem with messes ever since she was little and wanted to be a dairy farmer so her family went to a dairy farm and her brother pushed her into the runoff lagoon. For Your Information, basically a runoff lagoon is a part of a farm that carries off waste, including excess mulch and cow poop.

Schue wants to help her deal with her OCD and puts chalk on her nose, wiping it off after 10 seconds. The two feel a deep, personal connection, as I often do when someone violates my personal space and distresses my severe mental disorder by placing something on my skin.

The next day(?), Rachel calls a meeting of the glee club, explaining that she paid a freshman to get Schue to help him with irregular verbs (Schue’s a Spanish teacher, don’t forget). They would’ve all been meeting for glee club anyway, since none of them knew Schue wasn’t coming, so I don’t get why Rachel had to announce specifically she was calling a meeting. Also they’re in the gym for some reason. Anyway she decides to betray Schue and not do disco at the assembly after all, but to “give the people what they want”: sex. Rachel is an executive for the Fox network.

Half my jokes about Fox are stolen from the first 10 seasons of The Simpsons, so I don’t know if they apply anymore.

Why is the assembly in the gym? The auditorium looks big enough for a school assembly. Eh.

After announcing that the toilets are broken again and no one should use them, Figgins introduces Schuester. He talks about how glee is cool and everyone should join, and then had the glee kids go.

GET UP ON THIS!

They sing Salt-n-Pepa’s “Push It”. They were complaining about wanting “modern songs”, so they chose something that came out 22 years earlier. Buh.

And their choreography is all sexy and provocative and stuff. After they finish, there’s a pause, before the gymnasium erupts in applause.

Once again the glee club has successfully arranged and choreographed a song on short notice with absolutely no help from Will.

Figgins received a number of complaints from parents about the performance, even though none of them were there and almost all the kids liked the performance. Figgins gives Schue a list of “family-friendly” songs his pastor recommended, that the glee club is supposed to use as its repertoire from now on. All the songs apparently have either “Jesus” or “balloons” in the title, or are about the circus. To be fair, that still leaves them with a lot of awesome songs – the entire soundtracks of Barnum and Jesus Christ Superstar, for one thing. They should do a pep assembly with a performance of “This Jesus Must Die”. Except that’s really hard to dance to, actually.

This is literally the only episode this list is referenced in, by the way. It comes up in ONE scene later in this episode, and then never again.

Figgins also mentions he’s cutting the Cheerios’ dry-cleaning budget to buy new costumes for the glee club, because he saw several flashes of “panty”, and he’s not talking about the girls! Sue is outraged, but Figgins tells her to just use dry-cleaners in America instead of ones in Europe.

Emma’s cleaning her grapes individually when Tanaka invites her to Tulipalooza. She turns him down until he delivers The Truth and tells her to stop chasing after a married guy.

Rachel and Finn are rehearsing on the auditorium stage, rather than in the choir room room or gym or bathroom or wherever else. Finn wants to take a break, and conveniently Rachel has set up a picnic for them on the stage.

Finn says something that’s a weird mix of him saying he thinks she’s cool and also that he was afraid he would find her hiding under his bed last night (not joking). They drink virgin cosmos and do that stupid thing where the guy is like “Oh you have something on your lips” and then he wipes it off and then they kiss.

Finn then almost ejaculates and leaves, leaving Rachel to cover her face in shame. This is the first instance of “guy cheats on girlfriend and we’re supposed to be rooting for them for some reason” on the show.

Meanwhile, it turns out Terri is having a hysterical pregnancy. What that means is, her body believes it’s pregnant, so it’s mimicking all the symptoms, but there’s no actual baby developing inside. Also when the doctor bluntly said “there’s no baby”, Terri asked if the baby had fallen out. Terri’s so crazy, I don’t get why people dislike her.

Cheerios Quinn (middle), Santana (left), and Brittany (right) are auditioning for glee club. They (or rather, Quinn, and the phantom backup singers that Santana and Brittany are lip-synching to) sing Aretha Franklin’s “I Say a Little Prayer”. Unbeknownst to Schue, Quinn is joining to keep tabs on Rachel, to keep her from touching her boyfriend. Sue Sylvester approves, wanting to take down Glee from the inside.

Schue invites Emma to try out some new disinfecting wipes that night (kinky), but Emma reveals she’s going out with Ken Tanaka, so she can’t just keep dinking around with Schue all the time.

God that pot pie looks delicious. I wish pot pies weren’t so loaded with calories, aaargh.

Terri stayed up late, waiting for Will to get back from working as a janitor. She made him a chicken pot pie from scratch, to break the news about her hysterical pregnancy to him. But he says something about how he’s working for his family and whatever, and for some reason she can’t bring herself to tell him. So instead, she tells him they’re having a boy, and asks him to stop working as a janitor. She can give up her craft room, she says. They don’t need a new house. They hug, and we see her clearly panic-stricken face as she must be worrying what the heck she’s supposed to do now. I will give my opinion on this on another review.

Later, it seems that Schue gave Quinn the solo in “Don’t Stop Believin’”. Rachel believes he’s doing this to punish her, but Schue says “Contrary to your beliefs, it’s not all about you.” If only seasons 3, 4, and 5 of Glee had remembered this line.

Schue says something about how glee is supposed to be fun, so basically he’ll stop making them sing songs they hate [spoiler alert: no he won't]. In return, he wants Rachel to stop betraying him and get used to the fact that she won’t always be the star [spoiler alert: yes she will].

Presenting guest director J. J. Abrams.

Rachel sings “Take a Bow” about Finn, I guess. She’s mad because…? I don’t know, that song’s about like sarcastically applauding someone who cheated on you. Finn cheated on QUINN, not YOU, Rachel, shut up.

Final Thoughts: UGH WHAT. There’s literally no justification for giving Quinn the solo part to the song that Rachel had already been rehearsing the solo for. Schue’s just like “Well she performed a song on Figgins’s approved list.” SO? She’s BRAND NEW to the club, Schue. Give Mercedes the part. Plus, Don’t Stop Believin isn’t a duet, like they performed it the previous episode. It’s all a solo, with backup. Give ARTIE the solo. The whole song. Do it! Argh.

Compromise was a big theme in this episode, also. It was all really sucky compromise, though. Figgins ends up cleaning up the mess Sue made. The kids still do sexy things and Schue still makes them sing crappy songs they don’t like. Terri agrees to give up her craft room for the baby she doesn’t actually have. Guhhhwhat.

Best Song: Argh I can’t even remember all the songs from this episode. Ummm “Gold Digger”, I think, for the amazing pipes of Miss Amber Riley and the soulful tones of one Kevin McHale, and for it being generally a good arrangement.

Worst: “Take a Bow”. Because it doesn’t make any sense in-context, I think Lea Michele’s voice was a bit over-emotional for the song, and HER FACE.

This is a problem with Lea Michele’s singing – she’s got like constant “Show Face” when she sings. Basically that’s this things for when you’re a stage performer, you overdo your facial expressions so people in the audience can see it (if your face is too subtle, the people farther away can’t tell a difference). The problem is, Michele is on television, so she doesn’t need to keep doing that. Argh.

Irrelevant thoughts: I’ve gotten around 100 hits to this blog due to someone, or several people, trying to find out who Arlene Grayson is. I had to Google her to figure out what was going on. I still don’t understand why exactly I keep getting so many hits because of her, but apparently she was a producer on Boy Meets World and other shows, and I’ve actually mentioned her before. I also discovered while looking her up that the recap I linked to is on the first page of Google results for Arlene Grayson!

And a friendly reminder that you can follow this blog on Tumblr now. Every now and then I post extra stuff on there, mostly random thoughts or other images, or videos, even! It’s absolutely not necessary to follow the tumblr blog if you’re already following on WordPress, it’s just an alternate channel for people who perhaps don’t want to join WordPress or sign up for email updates or whatever.

First up, I changed the blog’s theme. I hope this new one is less terrible.

Always looking for future potential money makers, I was contemplating today, as my post count increases and I randomly get 600 page views from people searching for Arlene Grayson, why not a book?

I mean, many posts ago on fullhousereviewed.com, someone brought up the idea of having the website go into a book format. I guess basically all the episode reviews would just show up in the book? With bonus features?

So I’ve been tossing the idea of doing that myself around, even though I have nowhere near as many readers as fullhousereviewed did while it was still posting new articles. But there’s three main questions:

1. Who would buy this book?
2. What content would the book have?
3. Would it be illegal to publish a book containing screenshots from tv shows?

I have no answer to number 1. Certainly there’s a small market for people looking to buy books that contain episode recaps, particularly if they include “stuff you might have missed”-type things. But… why buy the book when there’s already a website with all the content on it? On a related note, that’s how I feel whenever other blogs announce they’re making a book. I mean there’s some value in having a physical book full of the best pictures from a site, but… why spend $30 when almost all of the content is online for free?

#2 goes off from there – one of the best things to entice people to buy a book based off a website is to include bonus, exclusive content. For most websites this means special posts that they never published on the website. The only thing I can think of in my case would be to post bonus reviews of movies and tv shows that I never put on this website… but that wouldn’t make much sense if I was to, say, do one whole book of Boy Meets World. I mean, what would I do there, include recaps of old interviews? I suppose I could just not review some episodes and say “only available in the book!” but that would be super lame.

And #3, WOULD it be illegal to put screencaps of a show in a book you were selling for profit? The whole “Fair Use” thing gets really fuzzy here. I’m covered on here because I’m using the screencaps for the purpose of education and review. But whenever money is involved, things get tighter. The Patreon thing I think works out because it’s basically donations for writing, rather than people paying specifically for a book full of screencaps in-between some writing.

The one website I looked at earlier basically said it depends, citing specifically if you publish 1 picture from a book that has 1000 pages, you’re probably safe, but if you publish 1 picture from a book that only has one page, you’re probably in trouble. So where do screencaps of tv and movies come in for that? If I put one screencap from a whole episode, is that okay? What if there’s 20 or so from a 45-minute episode? What happens if you just include the DVD cover or something? Or if you use a physical camera to take the screenshot?

So I had begun thinking – if it DOES seem it would be illegal to include all the screencaps in a book, what if I just redrew all the screencaps? If it’s clearly a reproduction that is not trying to completely mimic the original, that would go under parody territory and that’s usually pretty safe (as long as you’re doing it right). And depending on how I go about drawing the screencaps, that could add an extra level of hilarity. That would be a lot of work, though.

In conclusion, I realize I’m getting a bit ahead of myself in planning out a publishing venture for this blog that is so relatively unknown. But I still like to think ahead. In the meantime, if you’d like to give me money, I’ve mentioned the Patreon account enough on some of the other posts. Even $1 per post would be awesome!

Trying something new by putting 2 episodes in one review here. Wish me luck!

“The Big Dance”,January 25 1987

Voula’s dad is impressed with her writing the school newsletter, but doesn’t want her to go to the dance, because she’s too young, and he’s a Greek immigrant and Greeks don’t like to let anybody have fun ever [disclaimer: I am Greek, and that was a joke]

I mean that’s actually kind of reasonable – he’s probably seen enough 80s teen movies to know how badly school dances go sometimes, but this is a junior high dance. Those are always super safe. Well, not the ones at Degrassi, but in other junior high schools the dances are safe.

At school, Stephanie says hello to Voula, and Voula gets all sarcastic about how the school president is actually talking to her.

We also find out that Steph gets dressed at school because if her mom knew she dressed the way she does, she’d get grounded for sure. She’s actually dressed pretty reasonably today.

Also, we meet Lucy, who reveals that her parents are really chill about everything. Lucy is sporting one of those hideously gigantic sweaters that were popular in the 80s.

Lucy’s the one with the pink sweater, red scarf, yellow bandana, and huge black hair. FASHION.

It turns out Degrassi Junior High is sponsoring a foster child (yeah), but they need money for it. Lucy suggests they use the proceeds from the dance to fund the child, and everyone agrees. That one class in the school gets to make all of the school’s financial decisions. Lucy also suggests that Voula present the check officially at the dance. Voula panics and says Stephanie should do it, since she’s the school president.

Lucy says later she thinks that’s dumb, and Voula confesses she’s not allowed at the dance. Voula also asks to try some of Lucy’s lipstick. Uh-oh Voula, if your dad finds out about that he’ll sell you to a nunnery or something.

Actually he just makes her wipe it off with a paper napkin. He says something again about not wanting her to grow up too soon. Voula asks about doing a… thing for the foster child, on Saturday evening. She doesn’t say it’s a dance, but says it’s like a meeting. Voula’s dad is fine with that, as long as she’s home by 9:30.

Meanwhile, asks Wheels to the dance. Wheels agrees to go, and Joey gets mad because I guess he wants to go with Steph? That’s what you get for waiting, you broom-head.

Voula leaves for the dance. Her dad asks what’s in the bag, which is rude because you don’t ask women what they have in their bags and why is he asking what’s in the bag she’s bringing to a school meeting anyway? I’d assume it was school stuff. He reminds her to be back by 9:30 or he’s coming to get her (that sounds more ominous than I meant it to).

Voula actually has clothes to change into in her bag. She goes to Lucy’s house to change into… this.

Honestly I preferred the first dress. Anyway, twins Heather and Erika, and Stephanie, also arrive at Lucy’s house, to prepare for the dance. Voula doesn’t want to hang around with Steph so she heads to the dance.

There’s a scene of the kids dancing. Just imagine that scene from A Charlie Brown Christmas and you’ll get an idea of how they’re dancing.

One of the twins is impressed with how much alcohol is in Lucy’s house, and Lucy says they can go ahead and drink if they want to. This can only lead to good things.

Twin 1 reveals they got drunk at a party at their cousin’s house once, and ask Steph if she’s ever gotten drunk. Steph lies and says of course she has. Lucy just hangs out on the couch and watches them. Lucy is going to be like Seth Rogen’s character in that one episode of Freaks and Geeks, and stay the only sober person at a party so she can win money off everyone and make fun of them.

Joey waltzes in and starts looking through the records. Mr. Raditch slaps his hand away. It’s not an important scene, but it’s funny.

Lucy’s mom calls to check up on her, and Steph chugs a whole cup of what I think is kahlua.

Lucy worries she’s drinking too much, but Steph tells her not to worry. Steph has never had alcohol before, so obviously she is an expert who should be listened to.

The girls finally make it to the dance, with Stephanie literally falling-down drunk. Wheels turned off by Stephanie’s behavior. This will become quite ironic later on, Wheels being turned off by alcohol.

Then Raditch announces the start of the annual Degrassi “Crazy Dance” – whoever dances the craziest wins something. Stephanie joins in, until all the jumping and bumping causes her to throw up (she does make it to the bathroom, though). Wheels is not impressed. Stephanie also acknowledges she has made a mistake. Great, I guess.

She also realizes she’s too smashed to present the check. Lucy finds Voula to ask her to do it, but Voula’s curfew is coming up. Voula stays anyway, but uh-oh, her dad has already come to pick her up!

Featured on the steps are Voula’s dad and FORESHADOWING FOR A FUTURE EPISODE.

Why doesn’t Lucy just do it? Voula has to leave, Steph is sick, and Lucy is the one who came up with having the dance sponsor the kid in the first place.

Voula gives her speech confidently, and I guess all ad-libbed since she wasn’t planning on staying to present the check, but she gets distracted when she spots her father in the crowd.

As he drags her away, she protests that she’s a big girl who has rights. Voula’s dad says if she’s a big girl, she should act like one. Fair point. Voula replies that she could if he would stop treating her like a baby. Fair point, again. Voula’s dad points out her mother didn’t go to a dance until she was 16, with Voula rebutting that she lived in a different country, in a different time.

Voula’s dad I think wins the match though by saying what matters above all is that Voula lied to him, and that’s not okay. That’s the end of that storyline for this episode. I wonder if he actually would’ve said yes if she’d said the dance was for a good cause and they wanted her to present the check to the guy representing the foster child at the dance, since she came up with the whole foster child thing in the first place. Or would he have been like “No, get someone else to do it.”

Also Steph vows never to drink again.

Finally, this is the start of the seemingly abnormally high number of Greeks in the Degrassi franchise. I mean there’s not a lot, but there at least 3 on DJH/DH, and at least 2 on Degrassi:TNG. What’s really weird is, there are like no French or English-descended students of Degrassi. D:TNG has a lot of Scottish characters, but it’s just really odd that there are no French or English-descended people in Canada but there’s all these children of Greek immigrants.

“The Experiment”, February 1 1987

This episode is not as exciting or kinky as the title makes it sound.

Arthur has one of those ridiculous 80s watches that also gets TV or radio signals or something. Probably also has a calculator, because rich people 80s watches always have calculators.

Arthur and Yick talk about trying out for the basketball team as Raditch is saying something about papers being due. He hears Yick and chews him out for talking, calls him “Yu the Disorganized”, pointing out his desk.

Wow what. That is like SUPER disorganized, holy cow. My desk isn’t even that bad and I literally never put anything away.

We meet Kathleen (blonde) and Melanie (not blonde) for the first time. They’re in grade 7. Melanie is sad about how there are like no parties to go to in grade 7. She really wants to go to an 80s Teen Movie Party and try drugs. Kathleen asks if she’d seriously try drugs, and Melanie confirms she would. She then echoes the previous episodes alcohol conversation by asking if Kathleen would, to which Kathleen lies that she totally would.

Arthur and Yick make the team. Hooray! I guess. There’s a montage of them playing on the court at the park.

Arthur is terrible, but Yick it turns out is good. They leave after a while, and Yick complains about Raditch always picking on him and stereotyping him. He says he could turn in a paper that Einstein originally wrote and Raditch would still fail him. He probably would, but because Einstein almost exclusively wrote in German.

Arthur likes the idea, though, and offers to get Yick some papers written by Stephanie that Raditch graded the year before. Yick doesn’t know Arthur and Steph are siblings, so he doesn’t know how Arthur will get the papers, but Arthur says that’s not important.

Half the school is in some diner where everyone is drinking sodas or milkshakes, and Joey overhears Kathleen and Melanie talking about taking drugs. He offers to get them some drugs that he just made up.

Yick copies Steph’s papers. He’s smart enough to rewrite the whole thing in his handwriting, which is good. This would’ve been a much different episode if he’d just like crossed out Stephanie’s name and just handed in the exact same paper without even copying it.

Joey is selling some “New Zealand Zappers”, for $5. Wheels disapproves, but it turns out the Zappers are just vitamin pills. The girls don’t know that, though, and start acting totally high and loopy. Vitamins will do that to you.

Yick turns in “his” paper. Raditch is impressed, because he actually turned it in early. Boy was THAT a mistake.

A few days later, Yick gets the paper back. He got an A- on it, even though when Stephanie turned in the exact same paper she only got a B+. Arthur doesn’t see the problem  – Yick got a good grade so it proves Raditch doesn’t hate him, but Yick says it sure means something that he got a higher grade on a paper than the person who originally wrote it. Suddenly I’m reminded of that episode of The Partridge Family where Laurie becomes an Assistant Teacher and keeps picking on her younger brother Danny, being overly critical of all of his work, and then he turns in a poem that was originally written by Hemingway or someone to prove a point, and she actually grades him badly for it, so everyone’s all “See, you’re just picking on him because he’s your brother!” But then I was like “Maybe she just really thought the poem sucked, come on.” God I hate that show.

Anyway, Yick wants to use more of Steph’s papers. Arthur initially refuses, saying that once was an experiment, more than that is cheating, but Yick is just like “Come on!” so Arthur goes along with it.

Kathleen, Melanie, and two kids who never get names* want more drugs. Man, I should’ve been a drug dealer in middle school. Er, I mean, a vitamin pill dealer. Yeah. That’s what I meant.

So they’re all high in class again, and Raditch hands back a new batch of papers. Raditch actually recognized this last paper from Yick as being plagiarized from Stephanie Kaye. Raditch makes all his students write like 3 papers a week, how does he remember Stephanie’s exact paper?

Raditch asks why Yick plagiarized when he turned in such a good paper last week, so Yick points out that paper was also plagiarized, and he got a better grade on it than Stephanie did originally. The Drug Bunch are all laughing their heads off by now, and Raditch is PISSED and tells them to be quiet. He tells Yick that he should never let a perceived imperfection in a system justify cheating, and makes Arthur and Yick write papers on why they did this and why it was wrong at detention that afternoon.

Later, Steph confronts Joey at the diner, telling him that selling drugs is wrong. Joey laughs and says they weren’t real drugs. Kathleen and Melanie happen to overhear this, and are not pleased.

Yick says missing basketball practice for detention is all Raditch’s fault, he can’t write some dumb paper, blahblah. Arthur’s had enough of it, and tells Yick maybe if he actually tried in class and stopped blaming Raditch all the time, Raditch would start taking him more seriously. This gives Yick the spark he needs to finish his paper.

The Drug Bunch want their money back. Joey doesn’t have it, because he spent it on clothes already. This is unacceptable, and the gang chases Joey as he tries to run away. Despite being a year older, he’s the same size as the Drug Bunch, so he doesn’t stand a chance.

In Raditch’s class, Raditch reads a special paper someone wrote, about looking past appearances or something, and how one kid who’s super disorganized gets really discouraged when he gets called names. After class, Raditch calls Yick over. It turns out it was his paper that he just read, and he says it was genuinely good.

Raditch asks for a clean slate – they’ll both try harder, and Raditch will stop calling him “Mr. Yu the Disorganized”. It’s a deal.

Turns out the Drug Bunch locked Joey in the broom closet. And took his clothes.

Hahah, awesome.

Notes of Interest:

The actor who plays Yick Yu, Siluck Saysanasy, was born in Laos. They never say where Yick’s family is from on the show, just that they’re refugees from somewhere (that comes up in another episode). I’ve never been able figure out what Yick’s nationality would be based on his name, so I’m going to just go with that Yick’s from Laos as well.

He doesn’t have much in terms of acting credits – literally half of the shows he’s been on are part of the Degrassi franchise. It seems his true calling is directing – he’s been some sort of assistant director on… well, a lot of movies that nobody liked (like The Love Guru), plus some others. He also stood as a trainee assistant director on 17 episodes of Degrassi: TNG, as well as appearing as Yick in two episodes. He’s also apparently best friends with the guy who played Joey, even though their characters didn’t interact all that much.

And apparently re: my earlier thing about Greeks, there’s a neighborhood called Greekton – which I assume is like a Chinatown, but Greek – in Toronto. So I guess that’s why there’s so many Greek kids on Degrassi. It’s still weird that it seems like there’s more Greeks than there are French or British people. But that’s cool that there are so many at all, along with people like Siluck/Yick. So it’s like nobody’s a token minority and it feels like it’s a real school or something!

Original airdate: Feb 8 1987

Rick (who just by the way got held back one grade) is reading some magazine over breakfast. His dad thinks he stole the magazine, says money doesn’t grow on trees, and throws out the magazine. Rick mutters something under his breath, and Rick’s dad gets mad and hits him. UH- OH. Then the jaunty theme tune plays. DOUBLE UH-OH. Wait, no, what?

At school, Joey Jeremiah skateboards into Rick’s bike and cuts his forehead open. SMOOTH MOVE, JOEY. HAVE A NICE TRIP? SEE YOU NEXT FALL! Haha. Classic humor.

[Disclaimer: None of the kids on the show said those lame jokes. That was entirely me.]

Raditch, who was outside, sends Joey to the nurse and tells him to go to the principal after that because he’s been spoken to about his horseplay.

7th graders Caitlin and Suzie talk about Rick. They think he’s cute, but Caitlin heard he’s on probation. She thinks it’s because he gets into fights a lot, on account of he’s always covered in bruises. If only she knew the truth.

Oh and just fyi for any viewers of Degrassi: The Next Generation – Rick is basically Sean. Except Sean doesn’t just disappear without a trace at some point.

As Steph changes in the bathroom like always, she says hello to Voula. Voula is all “Oh what will people say when they find out the school president was talking to a lowly peasant like me!” Dang Voula, I know Stephanie didn’t thank you for doing all that work but why you gotta be so rude all the time? I mean, geez, seriously. Stephanie actually tries calling out Voula for being so rude, and Voula asks what Stephanie’s planning to do for picture day. Steph says she’ll just wear the clothes she always wears while at school, and Voula’s like “Yeah I’m sure your mom will LOVE to see you wearing all those whore clothes in your school pictures!” [Voula didn't say whore. I have nothing against whores. I just feel like "whore clothes" would be an appropriate description a middle schooler might use for Stephanie's wardrobe.]

Catilin and Suzie observe that Rick never smiles, so they resolve to do something to make him smile. That’s actually super adorable.

Um and Joey’s planning on wearing his jean jacket to photo day. But his mom chopped the jacket up for part because it was so wrecked. Joey’s disappointed, but his parents are like “we bought you a new jacket last week, wear that!” Joey rightly asserts that wearing the new jacket will make him look super lame. Joey’s Degrassi: TNG equivalent is Shawn because they both share a hatred of people fixing up their denim… Wait, I’m mixing up shows.

The next day, Rick overhears Joey complaining about his jacket. He offers to sell Joey an already beaten up jacket if he wants it. Joey’s going to Rick’s house after school to look at it. Also important, sort of, is Joey complaining that his parents ripping up his jacket is child abuse.

Caitlin and Suzie decide to tell Rick a joke, and I quote “Why did the turtle cross the road? Because it was the chicken’s day off! Ba-dum-dum.” Rick doesn’t laugh. Even I thought that was terrible, and I made a “see you next fall” joke earlier.

Stephanie begs Voula to help her figure out what to do for picture day. If she wears her home clothes, everyone will laugh, but if she wears her school clothes, her mom will ground her. Voula says “Your problem,” and ignores Steph after that. Voula’s cold, man.

Here’s my idea: Stephanie, just put on your home clothes and take off your makeup right before the pictures. Or just wear your baggy old lady home clothes the whole school day, and when people ask, tell them it’s for picture day. Lots of people wear weird stuff on picture day, come on.

So Joey arrives at Rick’s place. It’s a mess. Joey comments on this and asks why Rick’s mom never cleans up. Rick says he doesn’t have a mom. No one comments on how freaking rude it is to comment on how messy someone’s house is.

Rick pulls a bottle of Coke out of the fridge, hesitates, and reluctantly offers Joey the other bottle. Joey accepts. Rick pulls out the jacket, which he says belonged to his older brother Tracker Frank, who moved out at some point. Joey loves the jacket. Just then, Rick’s dad comes home.

He asks who Joey is, and then ignores Joey when he tries to introduce himself, going into a thing about the awful day he’s had. Joey’s just like “… So how much do I owe for the jacket?” Rick tells him it’s fine, just bring money to school tomorrow. Rick’s dad goes into the fridge and is all “What’s this? I thought we had two bottles of pop in here this morning.” He looks over at Rick, who is holding his own bottle and Joey’s.

Panic fills Rick’s eyes as he starts nudging Joey towards the door and telling him to leave. Rick’s dad starts ranting about “You think we can afford to give away everything to every little punk who comes by?!” Rick really forces Joey to leave, and the door closes right as Rick’s dad starts REALLY yelling and there’s lots of crashing sounds and Rick asking him to stop. Joey runs away.

The one bottle didn’t even look like it was open yet in the first place, the other bottle barely had anything drunk out of it, and since Rick and Rick’s dad are related, it seems like Rick’s dad could’ve just taken the bottle Rick had been drinking out of. But I guess crazy child abusers don’t think straight like that.

The kid who plays Rick has some decent biceps for being like 14. The only reason I mention that is because he wears a tanktop all the time.

Anyway he sobs on his bed and his dad knocks on the door saying “It won’t happen again!” Sure it won’t, dad. Sure it won’t.

Stephanie says she decided to just be herself. Why didn’t she just wear a sweater, though? Anyway Voula is all snotty and says “I’d love to see your mother’s face when she sees the pictures!”

Also for some reason Heather and Erika were getting their pictures taken with the grade 7 class even though they’re in grade 8.

Rick confronts Joey, demanding $15 for the jacket. Joey only has 10 on him, so Rick wants the jacket back. There’s a back-and-forth between them, Joey begging to keep the jacket for picture day and Rick demanding it back. I don’t know what the big deal is, he’s already wearing it, and he’s got 2/3 of the money on him, Rick, come on.

Rick finally agrees to take the $10 and get the rest from Joey after school, as long as Joey promises not to rip him off. Rick leaves to go… somewhere, and Joey asks if they’re going to talk about what happened yesterday. Rick threatens him and tells him not to say anything.

*sigh*

I love that Raditch’s handwriting slants upwards. They’re having a lesson on “confusing words”, which seems to be stuff like the difference between “breath” and “breathe”. If only Mr. Raditch taught the greater majority of internet users this sort of information.

Joey and… other kid are talking in class again. Other kid suspects the kid Joey was talking about getting abused earlier is actually Rick. I don’t remember them discussing this earlier, so okay. Anyway Raditch sends Joey to the principal for being disruptive. I would’ve taken that trip to the principal to say “Hey, I saw this kid getting beaten up by his dad yesterday, what do I do?” But then again, it’s tough when that stuff happens. You don’t want to be a snitch, you don’t know if it’s your place to say anything, etc. But please, if you DO see something like that, please do contact the authorities. I mean, a mother spanking her child is one thing, but a dad violently beating his son over drinking the last bottle of soda is another.

Well blow me down, Joey actually talks to the principal’s receptionist, asking what he should do if he knew a kid who was getting beaten up by his parents. Doris (the receptionist) asks if the kid is question is attending Degrassi, which Joey denies. He starts acting suspiciously and runs off, and Doris looks concerned and looks through her Rolodex to find the contact info for Children’s Aid.

History lesson: A Rolodex is an ancient, primitive devise that people used to store the contact information for when there were too many contacts to just keep an address book. Your typical Rolodex was basically a wheel, so you could just turn (or roll, if you will) all the pages at once to get the one you needed.

Rick follows Joey home to get the $5 he’s still owed. The chain on Rick’s bike falls off, and Joey assures him he can get it fixed at his house. They’re surprised to see a motorcycle outside Joey’s house. Joey doesn’t know what it’s doing there. Maybe someone’s just being a douche and parked outside his house for no reason. Although that’s clearly not the case because why would they bring it up if it had nothing to do with the plot?

Joey’s dad is talking to some guy, saying “We’ve raised four kids and never abused any of them, even though sometimes we’ve felt like it! *laughs*” I’d sure be interested in seeing Joey’s siblings, too bad they’re never even mentioned again.

So it turns out the guy is from Children’s Aid, and he says they take all these calls very seriously. When Joey and Rick comes in, he goes over to talk to Joey, commenting on the nasty bruise and cut he’s got.

Joey’s dad denies ever laying a hand on Joey, and Joey confirms he just fell on some bikes. The guy, who looks like blond Sid Vicious, asks who Joey was talking to Doris about, then. Rick starts edging towards the door, as Sid Vicious says if what Joey says is true, then whoever the abused kid is really needs help, even if he won’t admit it. Rick runs away but doesn’t get far because his bike is still broken.

Sid Vicious comes out and offers to help him, knowing a thing or two about bikes. He then offers to help Rick with the whole abuse thing, and Rick is like “blah I don’t need your help! What do you care?!” Sid Vicious wouldn’t be doing this if he didn’t care, and says he hates seeing kids get hurt, even when it’s not even physical. He says Rick looks really sad, and asks if there’s anywhere else that Rick could stay, and the scene ends.

At school, Rick asks for the rest of the money. Joey denies ever telling anyone anything about Rick, and Rick is like “yeah, whatever. Anyway I might be going to live with my brother soon. You could come over sometime. He might let you ride his harley.” Joey likes this idea.

Then Rick steals his beret, grins, calls him “buddy” and throws the beret back. Caitlin and Suzie are in awe of seeing Rick actually smiling.

Oh um and Stephanie. At picture day, she appeared to have a sudden moment of panic and self-doubt, and as she sat down for the picture she pulled her tube top up higher. That was the conclusion of that story for the episode. Thrilling.

Now it’s time for “Who did it better?”

Boy Meets World did an abuse episode, with a character I don’t believe we’d ever seen before and never see again. I hate it when shows do that, like that Saved By the Bell thing where Zach invites a homeless man and his daughter to live in his house and they’re never mentioned again. It just makes the whole thing so cheap when there’s these issues that never come up again. Eh. At least the BMW episode had a PSA for “if this has happened to you or someone you know, please call this number”.

This DJH episode was good from an outsiders standpoint. I mean obviously the abuse thing never came up before, and I’m not sure it ever comes up again besides being the explanation for why Rick doesn’t live with his dad anymore. But it seemed like it focused more on Joey, so the issues isn’t so much “What do you do when you’re being abused?” and more “What do you do when someone you know is being abused?”

Glee didn’t have a physical abuse episode, so okay there.

Degrassi: The Next Generation for sure wins this round out of the four shows, though. Like the others, the abuse never comes up before it’s a focus of the episode, since the character it involves had never even been on the show before. The abuse does come up after it’s resolved, though, in the form of the abuse character feeling really ridiculous when everyone talks about what a good father he had, how he really loved his son, etc, when he knows that his dad abused him pretty hard.

Speaking of which, GOSH the abuse scenes in TNG were pretty intense. I was genuinely afraid for Craig, and he ended up with some HUMONGOUS bruises. He had this huge one on his stomach that I’m sure was pretty uncomfortable. Like Rick’s dad, Craig’s dad overreacted to pretty much everything. Craig even jumped out of a second-story window at one point to get away from his dad. I think perhaps it helped that they gave TNG two episodes to deal with the story rather than one, so they could flesh out the story more so it wasn’t like resolved as soon as we found out about it.

Final thoughts: Voula is a great example of how being bitter can make a person extremely unlikeable.

Uh-oh, last episode before things get super sad. Savor the happiness while it lasts…

Okay I’m making it seem more dramatic than it is, there’s still humor after the next episode.

So anyway:

Shawn says his favorite thing about being at Cory’s house is there’s no Feeny. Cue Feeny:

That was really a dumb comment from Shawn, even if Feeny hadn’t just appeared like that.

Feeny came to give Amy a birthday present. Her birthday is that coming Sunday. Feeny lives next door, so it seems odd that he couldn’t have just waited to drop off the present. But it turns out the present is a key to his cottage in the mountains – Feeny makes a ton of money for being a school teacher. I mean he lives in what is presumably a 3 bedroom house, by himself. What.

Alan already has plans for the weekend, though, so Feeny tells them they can just go up there another time. That’s actually really sweet of Feeny to let people into his cottage that he barely uses, especially since it seems like he’s not super great friends with Alan and Amy.

Shawn hatches a plan and makes Cory go outside with him to discuss under the pretense that his history book just flew out the door (because he threw it).

Shawn has something to tell Cory, but it’s super sensitive, so he wants to use their secret code. Except they don’t have one. Shawn says they really should have one. Weird.

Anyway Shawn stole Feeny’s key, so he’s planning on taking Cory up there to cuddle up with some beautiful ski bunnies. Cory says this is wrong, deceitful, etc, but is going along with it because he’s the loser friend and they always have to go along with what Cool Friend says.

Later that day, Shawn has already packed and obtained bus tickets, even though it is LITERALLY THE SAME DAY. I mean somehow he bought bus tickets between being at Cory’s house studying, and being at school. What IS this? Although Shawn makes a comment in another episode that implies he can travel by cartoon physics, so maybe time just slows down for him when he needs it to.

Also I somehow forgot that Eric was still in high school.

Eric asks Turner how he knows some girl that Eric wants to date. Turner confesses that he knows her because she’s his student. Durff. Eric asks her out. They go on a romantic outing to Chubbie’s. Also Eric said he was a jock, so the girl asks what sport he plays. He says he’s great at pool when she says she doesn’t know anything about it.

Joey objects to Eric taking his and Frankie’s table, then challenges Eric to a duel for the table.

A ranger lets Cory and Shawn into the cabin. They accidentally say they’re both Feeny’s grandsons, explaining that they’re brother-cousins to each other. The ranger comes from mountain people and doesn’t think brother-cousins are odd at all. He then tells the boys to make sure to lock up the cabin real tight, so that Grady’s Axe doesn’t come to get them.

This turns into a Hey Arnold episode for a minute, minus Gerald, the Keeper of the Tale, and we learn about some guy who came up to the mountains with his new wife, but she fell in love with a ski instructor and left him. So the guy killed them and himself, and now every year the guy returns to the mountain to wreak his bloody revenge.

Cory has a question- if the guy took his own life, how does he return every year to wreak his revenge? My question is, who is he getting revenge on since he already killed the other two people?

The ranger doesn’t have an answer for either of us, and goes on to ask if they know how to turn on the electricity. He leaves, saying he’s watching a video with his buddy, Moose. The boys ask, “Oh, a Ranger Moose?” The ranger replies “A moose can’t be a ranger!” …Are there moose in Pennsylvania? Wikipedia’s moose range map says no. That just makes this whole scenario even weirder, so let’s move on.

Cory laughs at the guy thinking they don’t know how to turn on the electricity. He flips the light switch, nothing happens. He keeps flipping it, nothing. Dun dun dunnn. They could probably run out and catch the ranger since he only left like 10 seconds earlier and ask him to show them how to do it, but then there wouldn’t be a story.

Meanwhile Eric and Frankie are both doing bad at pool. Eric misses, Frankie sinks a shot but the ball BOUNCES OUT OF THE POCKET. Eric reveals to Eli, who is a creepy adult hanging out at a popular teen-oriented burger joint if you think about it, that they’ve been playing for an hour already, and not one ball has successfully made it into a pocket.

The boys made an expedition to the ski lodge, only to find that no one was there. Additionally, there is no snow, so they couldn’t ski even if they knew how. Shawn had earlier said the weather report called for a fresh blanket of powder, so Cory is curious as to what happened. Shawn clarifies that the radio definitely said there would be fresh snow in the Rocky Mountains, and Cory is angered by Shawn’s ignorance. They’re in the Poconos, which are quite far from the Rockies. For comparison, the distance is about equal to the length of Europe. It’s a bit like if Shawn was in the farthest part of Eastern Europe and got a weather report for Portugal. Weird.

Then the lights turn on. Or else Shawn got an idea.

The door opens, and the boys grab weapons. Shawn shouts “Okay you dead psycho axe murderer! Let’s see what you’re made of!”

Cue Feeny.

Shawn tells Feeny he has no right trespassing on his own property. Cory says actually his parents are on the way up and they just ran ahead to to get a look at the place. Feeny doesn’t believe him, even though that was a pretty decent explanation that would’ve potentially gotten Feeny out of the house. Good try, Cory.

Turns out Feeny came up to start packing up the place so he can sell it. Cory says “We’ll take it!” and Shawn follows up with “Hey NOW you’re trespassing!” Feeny of course ignores this, and Cory asks Feeny to just call his parents so they can go home. However, it’s too late at night for that, so they’ll just have to spend the night in the cabin.

Shawn asks how many beds there are, and when Feeny reveals there is only one, Shawn says he’ll flip Feeny for it. He takes out a coin, flips it, Feeny catches it, and says “You lose.” DJ Smooth at his finest.

Well hello play bar thingy at the bottom!

It’s been 3 hours. Still no one has sunk a single shot. Eric’s lady friend leaves because he’s a loser. There’s a montage of weird, impossible misses and close calls, including a ball exploding, and this.

One ball sitting on the other. That’s the joke.

Shawn puts a spoon on his nose, and wants to beat his previous record of seven and a half hours, but Feeny won’t let them use his watch to time him. Feeny is also all “Have you ever considered what seven and a half hours would do for your schoolwork?” Shawn’s like “hurr?” and Feeny says he likes to read in his cabin.

Feeny sits down to read, because he likes to read in his… yeah, and Cory and Shawn discuss Feeny. Cory says the British are always hard people (the joke being that Feeny isn’t British but they think he is. He DOES have a really weird accent). Shawn says that isn’t good enough and asks Feeny directly why he hates him so much. Feeny denies hating Shawn, and reveals he actually memorized Shawn’s transcript, and also he knows that Shawn loves the musical group Counting Crows. Dats creepy, Feeny.

But Shawn’s like “lol cool” and then Feeny asks the boys to help him with the dishes. And then he makes just Shawn and Cory do it, and Cory knocks Feeny’s watch into the sink (Feeny having earlier put the watch on a dish towel). Cory, while feeling around in the sink for it, accidentally pulls out the sink plug and Feeny’s watch goes down the drain. Feeny is obviously disappointed, but says “Well, it was only a 30 year old watch. About time I got a new one.” Unfortunately this doesn’t turn into that Hey Arnold episode where Arnold and Gerald go into the sewers looking for the watch, only to find a crazy guy living down there who is the Sewer King and has claimed the watch as his royal medallion and Arnold challenges him to a game of chess to win the watch back, and the guy is so happy to have someone besides rats to play with that he agrees. And eventually Arnold gets the watch back even though the sewer king is angry and chases them, and when Arnold gets the watch back in his grandpa’s hands, grandpa knocks the watch into the sink drain,says “oh well” and then reveals he has a drawer full of like 30 more identical watches and then Arnold is just so 400% done he just goes upstairs.

What’s with all the Hey Arnold in this recap?

Feeny goes to bed, and Shawn reads the book Feeny had been reading earlier. Turns out it’s a journal of the good old days. Apparently Feeny used to come up to this cabin with his wife – Shawn expressing surprise that Feeny was ever married – and he’d skip teaching his classes and whatever to go up there with his wife. And on their 5th anniversary, it seems that his wife gave him the very watch Cory knocked down the drain earlier. I guess the sink doesn’t have one of those U- or S-bends so they couldn’t just turn the water off and unattach it and hope the watch just got caught in the bend.

Instead Shawn goes diving into the cabin’s septic tank to recover the watch.

They’re in trouble, blahblah. Also apparently Shawn stole one of Feeny’s spoons. And Feeny implies he might not sell the place after all. We don’t know why he decided to sell it in the first place, so whatever.

They’ve been playing pool for 15 straight hours. Probably Eric won’t get in trouble for staying out that long. Frankie has to leave, for choir practice (he’s in his church choir). Eric protests, saying of course they want to leave now that he has them right where he wants them. Joey counters that Eric couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn if it said “Hey, I’m the broad side of barn! Hit me!”

Joey and Frankie leave, and Eric says good riddance, and Eric sinks ALL THE BALLS.

Here’s a video!

This episode’s IDMB listing has an animal coordinator listed as staff. Why? There was like one episode so far that had an animal in it. And it wasn’t in this episode.

In other news, it occurs to me that most tv review sites actually give ratings to the episodes they review, and I thought I should do that, except I’m terrible at grading things. Pretty much everything is either great, terrible, or in the middle. I’d like to come up with my own grading scale, like “On a scale of Citizen Kane to The Room, this episode was The Maltese Falcon.” But, eh. I like not rating things.

This episode has a surprising amount of guest stars for being the third ever episode of a tv show.

Oh hey The Bob Newhart Show premiered on September 16 in 1972. Yeah I think I’m going to drop this “on this day” feature. Not even the “on this day in music history” stuff is interesting. Bah.

Last time on Glee: Terri found out she’s not actually pregnant, Quinn and two others joined the glee club which is good because Schue needs 12 members for the group to compete at Regionals which he’d know if he’d ever bothered to read the show choir competition manual, Rachel and Finn bonded by Rachel felt betrayed and used when Finn stayed with his girlfriend after cheating on her with Rachel, and Emma decided to stop pursuing Schuester and go out with Ken Tanaka. If only all of my review were that short.

Will and Terri are having dinner with Will’s parents, and Will announces that Terri’s pregnant. Since only Terri knows she isn’t pregnant, she’s not super pleased about this, but plays along.

Also Will’s parents are Victor Garber and Debra Monk.

Five years later and it still makes me really angry that they never sang on the show. Victor Garber’s been in tons of tv shows and movies, and is a Broadway and musical veteran, having appeared in the original cast of Sweeney Todd, played Jesus in the movie version of Godspell, and played the mayor of River City in Disney’s version of “The Music Man”, which also featured Debra Monk and upcoming Glee guest star Kristin Chenoweth. Likewise, Debra Monk has also been in a ton of tv shows and is a Broadway vet. And they not only never sing on this show, they don’t even get names, and never show up again after this.

Will and Will’s dad have a heart-to-heart about how Will’s dad is sad he never had the guts to do what he really wanted in life, which was to become a lawyer, and yeah raising a kid is scary but don’t let that hold you back from doing what you want to do. I think that’s what Emma was trying to say in the first episode, but it’s better phrased here.

Their clothes look like a crayon factory exploded on them.

Rachel objects to Schue’s terrible choreography (we learn through a short flashback that Quinn put her up to it). They want to hire Dakota Stanley, who “understudied as the candelabra in Beauty and the Beast on Broadway.” Schue says just because he understudied doesn’t mean he ever actually performed, and Quinn is all “Did you ever perform? Did you ever even try?”

I’m not sure why being an understudy for an inanimate object would make you some great choreographer for a high school show choir, but okay. Actually a good point here is – why doesn’t Quinn manage the choreography? She’s the head cheerleader, seems like she oughtta know something about choreographing.

Actually this raises another, weird point – in a lot of shows (like Degrassi), the extracurricular activities have NO teacher input. In the 13 years Degrassi: TNG has been on air, they have never once referred to having a cheerleading coach, and in fact the head cheerleader is the one who is in charge of literally everything – fundraising, getting uniforms, choreographing routines, coming up with cheers, etc. On Glee, though, they have a cheerleading coach who instead doesn’t seem to leave anything to the head cheerleader. Why is there a head cheerleader if she doesn’t really do anything? Why is that, Glee? Why?

By the way, this has always bothered me: Why does the guidance counselor’s office have walls that are just windows? There’s literally no privacy for you in the guidance office. I hope the real school they originally filmed in and then based the set off of doesn’t have its guidance office in a room that is literally 3/4 windows.

Anyway Schue talks to Emma about how he always wanted to perform after high school, but never did, because of a lack of confidence or something. She says it takes more certainty than talent to be a star, citing John Stamos as an example. BURN.

Emma is disinfecting her plastic plants, also.

Sandy Ryerson, aka the former glee club teacher who was fired for allegedly molesting a student (or maybe he really did and Rachel wasn’t lying?), is visiting because his old friend Henri is back from the hospital. It seems Henri is the school’s shop teacher, and is also addicted to cough syrup, and he accidentally sawed off his thumbs.

Henri is played by John Lloyd Young, who doesn’t have much in the way of screen acting credits, BUT played Frankie Valli as part of the original cast of Jersey Boys, and is reprising the role in the Clint Eastwood-directed movie version (yes, THAT Clint Eastwood is directing a musical based on the rise to fame of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. No comment.)

Terri sent Howard Bamboo to deliver the cake she was supposed to bring Henri.

As Henri struggles to eat the cake with his hands all bandaged up, Schue says it’s nice hanging out, just the guys. Tanaka, Sandy, and Howard all lament their terrible lives – being lonely, and Howard being afraid of his vacuum – and Schue totes can relate to that because he doesn’t know how to dance.

Of course Henry wins by point out he doesn’t have thumbs, and they sing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” to cheer him up, I guess. Schue comments that they sound really good and then STARES AT US AND SINGS.

Aaagh.

“This Is How We Do It” is sung by the guys as Schue says a few weeks ago he would’ve thought this was weird and lame, and the guys try to come up with a name for their group – Henri suggests Crescendudes, Tanaka comes up with Testostertones, but Howard comes up with Acafellas. Since that’s the name of the episode, I’m sure you can tell that’s what they went with.

But he looks so sharp!

They kick Sandy out of the group because he’s creepy. Then Terri interrupts their singing, saying if she doesn’t get some sleep, she could miscarry.

Schue kicks the guys out, and internal monologues about how ever since Schue formed the boy band, Terri has been like all over him. They’re even having sex once a week now. In reality, Terri’s just trying to get knocked up for real, but failing miserably. Which begs the question – why doesn’t she just fake a miscarriage? Early term miscarriages aren’t all that unusual, it would take the pressure off her to conceive before Will starts getting suspicious, and it would also garner some sympathy from Will. We learn later on that part of why she wanted a baby so badly was because she was afraid of losing Will, and I think, if a real baby wasn’t an option to keep him around, pretending to have had a miscarriage would at least keep him for some time. And faking a miscarriage would be so easy, she could just wait and say it happened while Will was at work and she didn’t have an opportunity to tell him about it while he was working.

Now, PLEASE be advised, if you are not a fictional character, don’t fake a miscarriage to grab sympathy for your husband or other people. That’s just insane. Faking a pregnancy is also insane. If you’re doing either and you’re not some lonely little kid, you need to go to therapy, because that is just unhealthy. Incidentally, Terri also needs to go to therapy, so there’s that.

Well anyway.

Rachel announces that Schue is coming to glee rehearsal. She tried offering him some homemade apology cookies, a variation on the kind she likes to make for the poor around Christmastime. Huh, if only she had remembered she does that in the most recent episode of Glee where she’s trying to start a charity case to boost her image.

Rachel’s season 1 episodes were all so adorable, actually.

Schue says it’s fine, and actually thanks her. If she hadn’t kept pushing and pestering him, he says, he never would’ve started Acafellas. He tells her to go ahead and hire Dakota Stanley, and basically quits as glee club director.

Finn blames Rachel for everything, and is the only one who votes against hiring Dakota Stanley. He also threatens to quit if they do after the two have a conversation about zzzz I don’t even care. Feelings or something.

Sue holds a meeting with Quinn and Santana, where they gleefully [heyyo] dish that Schue’s barely a part of the club anymore. Sue says that’s not quite enough, and commands them to go after the other glee clubbers and take them down, one by one.

Mercedes sadly watches some PDAs in the hallway and asks Kurt if he’s ever kissed anyone. Kurt hasn’t, but wants to. He says they’re at the bottom of the social heap, and that Special Ed kids get more action than they do. This plus the comment from last episode Sue said about only Special Ed kids being dumb enough to join glee club or something… Geez. Rude.

Kurt asks if Mercedes has anything picked out for their little field trip to Carmel High. Mercedes is like “Why, is there a dress code?” and Kurt says something about how you should always look your best or something. He leaves, and Santana and Quinn show up and says Mercedes should totally tap that. Kurt is totes into her, which anyone would assume given that he dresses like a woman half the time. Wait…

The Acafellas perform “Poison” at some bar or something. We’re 1/3 of the way throughout the episode and so far, only the Acafellas have sung anything. They’ve also had CDs made, which Will’s parents are giving out. Figgins invites Schue to have the Acafellas perform at an upcoming PTA meeting. Apparently the parents have been very upset since they found out they’ve been serving prison food in the cafeteria. I know some prisons actually serve pretty decent food, whereas school cafeterias… don’t, so I don’t know what the issue is there.

Sandy wants back in the group, and offers to get Josh Groban to show up at the PTA meeting if they do let him in. They’re allegedly pen pals. But Schue won’t take the bait, and refuses on account of them having standards. But Sandy says he knows Josh Groban is looking for an opening act, and the other Acafellas find this information intriguing. I can only imagine how well it would go over to have some acapella hip-hop group consisting of middle aged men opening for Josh Groban, but okay.

The glee kids, minus Finn and Artie, have arrived to spy on Carmel High and to see if they can score Dakota Stanley. Kurt notably has a GIANT new car, which his dad let him have if he promised to stop wearing form-fitting sweaters that stop at the knee, exactly like the one he’s wearing in the screencap.

Mercedes is worried about getting laughed at, but Kurt compliments here, saying specifically that the outfit she’s wearing is amazing. She asks if he’d ever want to hang out. Kurt suggests they watch this Liza Minelli marathon that’ll be on AMC that weekend. Hey, maybe Kurt’s not gay and he’s actually just Buster Bluth or something.

Rachel spots Andrew Cohen [no relation to Tina Cohen-Chang, I guess] of Vocal Adrenaline, who was the star something or other at Nationals or something last year. She’s vomiting into a garbage can as another member of Vocal Adrenaline tries telling her she’s not allowed to leave rehearsal for any reason, including heat exhaustion or Crohn’s disease.

Also the other one’s wearing a neck brace.

Rachel announces that they’re there to hire Dakota Stanley. Andrea tells her not to do it, because he’s a monster.

Vocal Adrenaline performs “Mercy”. I am so sick of hearing this song because they kept using it in promos for other shows ALL THE TIME a few years ago and ugggh everytime I hear it I just want to hit the singer with a sledgehammer and go “How’s THIS for mercy?!” This is called “over-saturation” and is not a good way to endear someone to your product, show, or song, by playing it ALL the time, everywhere.

Dakota Stanley’s fee is $5000, plus an extra $3000 if they place at Nationals. That’s pretty stiff. Also the guy who plays Dakota Stanley is Whit Hertford, who perhaps you know as Walter/Duck-Face from Full House, or more recently, Officer Ross on Raising Hope. …Not the must illustrious career, I’m afraid, but as long as he’s happy.

Howard Bamboo is quitting Acafellas, saying “it was never his dream.” And it turns out Henri overdosed on cough syrup again and Figgins insists he go to rehab before he’s let back in the school.

Schue puts an ad on Craigslist PlaceYourAd.com to fill the vacant Acafellas places. Finn talks to him about how he doesn’t want to be in Glee club because all the football players think he’s gay. Schue encourages him not to, and then has an idea.

Huh. So I wonder if that thing I pointed out in the first episode was actually a calendar? But why are all the months pink? I think the heart is for Mother’s Day? Geez, set decoration should not be this confusing.

Puck, surprisingly, wants to join Acafellas. It turns out he’s totally into older women, and wants to perform at the PTA meeting because it’ll be full of moms. That sure would’ve been interesting, if they’d had Puck enter a relationship with one of the other glee club members’ moms, and there’s like a part where Puck is teasing whoever it is and tells them he’s going to be their new daddy, and the kid is like “UGH NO I’M OLDER THAN YOU, SHUT UP.”

Rachel and Tina try to tell Mercedes that Kurt is probably gay, but Mercedes is like “you’re just jealous” and talks about how no one ever even looks at her, so what if someone actually seems to like her? I’m no expert, but I think this is… realistic? Lots of women are so pleased to finally have someone to be really close to, that they don’t even notice the guy is totally gay, or cheating, or just terrible in general. And it’s one of those things where sure you could argue “Dump that guy, there’s someone better out there for you!”, but the facts simply don’t stand up – how can you be sure there’s someone else out there when you’ve only ever had the one boyfriend? You’re not getting any younger.*

*I’m not trying to say you should stay with a terrible guy just because he’s the first guy who ever asked you out, I’m just trying to explain a common train of thought for women like myself who are batting zero in the relationship department.

Sue got the Cheerios to put on a car wash fundraiser for the glee club so they can hire Dakota Stanley. Kurt invites Mercedes to go to sing-a-long Sound of Music with him later that day, and Mercedes asks if they can make it official that they’re dating since that would be their third date and all.

Kurt is like “What, no” and says he’s in love with someone else, looking behind her. Mercedes turns just as Rachel sticks her head up into frame.

So of course she assumes Kurt’s in love with Rachel. Kurt looks confused for a second and then says “Oh yeah. For several years now.” Mercedes is too blinded by rage to catch this blatant lie, picks up a rock, smashes Kurt’s windshield, and SING IT, GIRL.

She sings “Bust Your Windows” which I am declaring as the best song in this episode already, and one of the Top 5 for the whole season.

Great choreography, great story relevance, and DANG GIRL, SHOW US DEM PIPES. Seriously, Amber totally rocks this song.

Watch it at this terrible quality Hulu link.

When she finishes fantasy singing, Kurt says “You busted my window! How could you do this?!” Mercedes replies, “Well you busted my heart,” and finishes with an attitude-filled side head bob that let’s face only black women can pull off successfully.

That expression is on my own face about 80% of the time.

They somehow raised enough money to hire Dakota Stanley. Let’s sit back and take a minute to wonder how a high school car wash raised at least $5000 on its own. Why doesn’t the school just hold monthly car wash events? It seems like that would sure help with the school’s budget woes.

Dakota hands out personalized menus to everyone, except Artie. Artie’s been cut because he’s not trying hard enough at walking. Mercedes is also cut even though Dakota made a menu for her (which consisted entirely of “coffee”). When Kurt objects, Dakota tells him to lay off the aerosol or he could burst into flames at any minute, tells the cheerleaders they’re perfect, tells Rachel to get a nose job, and calls Finn Frankenteen (which was actually the behind-the-scenes nickname for Cory), and goes on about how freakishly tall he is. Dakota is also fairly short, so that doesn’t help.

Finn has had enough, and quits. Tina, who even in being insulted is completely ignored, quits as well, followed by Artie, Kurt, and Mercedes. Rachel is torn, especially when Dakota asks if she wants to stay and be a winner, or not.

Rachel has a burst of brilliance, though, and mentions Barbra Streisand. Since all she says at first is literally just “Barbra Streisand”, no one knows what she’s talking about. She goes on to say that when Barbra first started her career, everyone told her to get a nose job. She refused, and that worked out well for her. [Interesting counter example - Jennifer Grey DID get a nose job, and her career suffered horribly afterwards. No one could remember her face after the nose job.]

Rachel continues, saying they’ll never be as good dancers as Vocal Adrenaline, and they don’t need to be. They’ll win just by being special. [Spoiler alert: No they won't. You need talent to win a talent competition.]

Mercedes, following Rachel’s lead, mentions that “they” said J. Lo’s butt was too big [to be fair, it is freakishly huge]. Artie mentions Curtis Mayfield, who became more successful after he was paralyzed [I'm viewing his Wikipedia page now and I'm not sure that's strictly true? He got a lot of honors and accolades after he was paralyzed, but I think he would've gotten those anyway due to him being old at that point. I guess that counts as being successful, though.]

Finally Finn mentions “Jim Abbott, one-armed pitcher for the Yankees.” Finn, you have both arms, what are you even talking about. I’m sure Jim Abbott can still dance even though he’s missing a hand. He can sure as heck show up to tell 6th graders to consider getting an education alongside being a pro baseball player, though! And again Tina doesn’t get to say anything.

They fire Dakota. I sure hope that $5000 was refundable.

The Acafellas – now consisting of Schue, Finn, Puck, Sandy, and Tanaka,  because three middle-aged guys and two teenagers isn’t even creepier or anything – prepare for their performance. I was about to ask why the Acafellas would be performing instead of perhaps the glee club, but then I remembered that all the parents were complaining about their sexy pep rally performance from the last episode, so that makes sense.

They sing “I Wanna Sex You Up”, which is definitely not creepy given the ages of all involved or anything. We get to hear Puck sing for the first time, though, so that’s cool.

The PTA loved the performance for some reason.

Then Josh Groban shows up.

So many guest stars, wow. Josh Groban actually showed up to tell Sandy to stop calling him, sending him chocolates or lockets of his hair or sonnets. He’s filed a restraining order. Poor Sandy genuinely thought they were friends, but… nope. I mean Sandy’s a nut, but you can’t help but feel bad for the guy, thinking he made an actual friend.

Josh Groban compliments the other guys for a good show, and leaves.

Actually he apparently stays and flirts with Will’s mother, who has been downing alcohol like no one’s business the whole episode.

Terri goes to find her, and Will and Will’s dad have a heart-to-heart in the parking lot. Will’s dad says he saw how Will inspired those glee kids, and that made him inspired to go after his dream of becoming a lawyer. I like to think he achieved his dream and went on to start the firm Eli Stone works at in the show “Eli Stone”. I mean other than both being played by Victor Garber and both being lawyers, there’s really nothing in common. Maybe he just changed his name, I don’t know. Sure he has a daughter on that show too, but I don’t know if we know for sure if Will is an only child or not. We never see his parents again and I don’t think any other family ever comes up.

Mercedes apologizes for breaking Kurt’s car’s window, and offers to pay to fix the damage. Kurt says it’s fine, actually his dad took his car away when he found Kurt’s hope chest full of tiaras. Mercedes wishes Kurt good luck with Rachel, hoping they have a lot of loud, talented babies together.

She starts to leave, but Kurt has something to say. He’s not in love with Rachel, he says. Actually, he’s gay. WHOA. Did NOT see that coming. I mean the Liza Minelli and musical obsession, the feminine fashion sense, the hope chest full of tiaras… Who’d have guessed?

For real, I wonder if anyone watching the show when it was originally airing found this shocking or surprising? I mean I don’t want to stereotype, but… come on.

Mercedes asks if he was just gay the whole time, why didn’t he just tell her? Kurt reveals that he’s never actually told anyone before. Mercedes encourages him to stop hiding who he is and tell people, especially the other kids in glee club. Glee is all about revealing who you really are or something, after all. Kurt says it’s just not that easy, and he’s just not that confident. All the other kids basically know he’s gay anyway, so it’s not like it’d be a huge deal. Unfortunately Kurt can’t hear my advice from 5 years in the future, and so he just walks quietly away.

Quinn and Santana have a meeting with Sue. She is not pleased that the glee club fired Dakota Stanley, Schue is back and working on a new number, and everyone is more confident than ever. She asks the girls to smell their armpits.

That is the stench of failure. She tells the girls she’s revoking their tanning privileges, which makes Santana break into tears and walk away sobbing. I’m not sure if it’s poor writing or a joke that someone with naturally tan skin would be upset about losing tanning privileges, but I’ll go with it being a joke.

Quinn also gets up to leave, but stops in the doorway. She thanks Sue for giving her a very valuable lesson, and that lesson is that when you’re really confident in yourself, you don’t have to put others down. Hm. That is a good lesson. Future lessons on the show will seem to include things like “Stalk people relentlessly to get what you want!” and “If you keep catching breaks and getting everything you ever wanted, you can take as many risks as you want and literally nothing bad will happen.” But those are for another day.

Schue has the kids rehearsing some new steps. Rachel says they’re good. Here’s another thought – Rachel has apparently been taking dancing lessons since before she could walk. Why doesn’t Rachel choreograph? If Dakota Stanley can be some great choreographer because he was an understudy on Broadway, why isn’t Rachel a good choreographer because she’s been winning dance competitions for years?

[I think it's because Les Michele is actually not a great dancer, even though Rachel is supposed to be].

Final Thoughts: Why don’t we ever see Will’s parents again? I get there was no reason for them to sing in this episode, and that’s fine. But there were plenty of episodes later on that they could’ve come back and sang something. Maybe after Will’s marriage falls apart, he finds out his dad dropped out of law school to care for Will’s drunken mother, and seeing his dad so miserable makes Will inspired enough to get out of his funk. Or something.

Best song: BUST YOUR WINDOWS. HANDS DOWN. BEST.

Worst song: Hm… all but one other song were by the Acafellas, so they’re all sort of equal… I guess I’ll go with “This Is How We Do It”, because it was pretty unnecessary? None of the songs were really standout awful to me, though, even that “Mercy” song which I hate.

First off, I changed my Patreon campaign to monthly instead of per-work, because it was getting really obnoxious to have to keep posting all my posts on there, especially since I schedule most of these in advance on here. So if you feel like it, drop over there and pledge to donate like $5 a month or something? Or spread the word! Tell your friends! I’m gonna have to start eating these DVDs soon.

105, “The Great Race”; Feb 15, 1987

Boy Meets World audience: “wooooOOOOOOOoooooh!”

Melanie’s checking to see if she has boobs. Her mom won’t let her get a bra until she gets them. Oh also Melanie’s on the school swim team.

Um, right, so, boobs. Amiright? Remember how when you were like 12 you couldn’t wait to get boobs, and then you finally got them, and then you discovered they were more nuisance than they’re worth, especially if you got them even though you’re a man? Right.

Anyway I guess the swim team wins their meet. They have terrible form on the crawl stroke, you aren’t supposed to breathe on every stroke, you’re supposed to do three and then breathe.

L.D. asks Stephanie if she’s going to announce that the swim team won. Stephanie, who clearly doesn’t like L.D. very much (whenever she talks about sports or whatever Steph’s really sarcastic towards her), says it’s not her job as school president to announce it, it’s the sports rep’s job. Good thing there aren’t any adults in charge of making these kinds of announcements, eh?

Melanie is staring at Snake. Snake notices, so Melanie pretends like she wasn’t just staring at him. L.D. appears from nowhere and says “So you like Snake, eh?” Who wouldn’t? Snake is super cute, especially with hair. Plus he’s nice. That’s good.

Jason Cox, the sports rep, only announces an upcoming soccer game, and never mentions the swim team won.

Meanwhile, Arthur and Yick are sad that they’re short, so decided to stalk Snake to see what he eats, hoping if they eat like he does, they’ll grow tall too. That’s something that makes sense if you don’t think about it too hard, especially if you know that the average height of humans started increasing when people started eating better,  not just eating gruel and stale bread all the time.

What fine specimens of men these be.

LD finds Jason and the soccer team and asks what the heck is up with the not announcing the swim team won? Jason says there wasn’t enough time, LD counters with the fact that it wouldn’t have taken 10 seconds to say. Jason says that no one cares about girl’s sports, citing the fact that all the sports programs are all men’s sports. Man, I love it how a show from 1987 covers an issue that’s still a problem almost 30 years later. Ha.

Here’s a point to ponder: Why is it that no one cares about women’s sports? Seems like women who like watching sports would want to watch women’s sports. And I don’t know, I feel like heterosexual men should like it too, if it’s combining their two favorite things – sports and women. As for me, I hate sports and am not fond of women any more than I need to be. I must now reveal that not only am I woman, I was also actually on a swim team for four years. Man, I used to have decent-sized biceps back then. Pff.

Jason goes on to say that swimming is lame anyway, and soccer is hard. If they had to swim against a bunch of girls, that’d be super easy to win! So LD is like “Fine, then we challenge you to a swim meet!” and Jason agrees.

Later, Melanie wonders if Snake thinks she’s just a little kid. Her mother thinks she is, since she won’t let her get a bra. You know, at the very least she ought to have a training bra. Speaking of – there’s this dumb joke that goes around where people are like “Training bra? What are you training them to do?” A training bra is to train the WEARER about proper bra-wearing procedures. They’re usually really thin and lightweight material and don’t provide the padding or support that real bras do, so you can get used to the feel of hooks and straps on your bosom before you really need to.

So anyway LD takes Melanie bra shopping. Melanie worries what her mom will say, and LD tells her to just change at school, like Stephanie does.

They’re being ridiculous in the store, and this faintly British lady comes over. LD tells the lady Melanie wants a bra, so she measures Melanie and finds her a little bra. Lady tells her to try it on, and Melanie is SHOCKED. Try it on, right there in the store? LD clarifies that she should get changed in the fitting room. Melanie’s hilarious sometimes, and rarely intentionally on her part.

LD finds Steph the next day in the bathroom, and asks her to officiate at the match between the swim team and soccer team. Steph agrees because all she has to do is say “Swimmers, on your mark, go”, and she’s looking forward to showing off her new “wet look” bikini. Apparently a “wet look” swimsuit means the fabric is shiny and it’s a somewhat tighter fit. That’s kind of weird, do most swimsuits get shiny when they’re wet? I can’t remember, it’s been like 6 years since I was somewhere where people wear bathing suits. Pretty much no one wears suits to the beach here since the water is always so cold.

…

Speaking of showing off:

Melanie tries to impress everyone in the hallway, and Joey and Jason make fun of her, implying she stuffed her bra with tissues. She denies stuffing. Maybe she just grew two cup sizes overnight. That seems like a perfectly reasonable explanation, it does.

Later, Jason, Wheels, and Asian-kid-who-isn’t-Yick discuss the upcoming race against the girls. Wheels is having second thoughts, since the girls have made it to the city finals so clearly know at least a bit more about swimming than they do. Jason suggests they get Snake to participate. Wheels and Other Kid point out Snake isn’t on the soccer team, and was actually cut because he was terrible. But apparently he’s a pretty good swimmer.

Cool shades, bro.

Snake looks like the kid who played Alfalfa in The Little Rascals movie.

Jason tells Snake if he agrees to swim for the team, he’ll talk with the soccer coach about getting him on the team, since Snake loves playing soccer although he’s terrible. Snake agrees to the terms.

Then Snake feasts upon his lunch, only to notice Arthur and Yick. He’s having a problem with 7th graders staring at him this week. Anyway they confirm that Snake is eating yogurt, and leave. Yick protests that eating yogurt doesn’t make you tall, and Arthur supposes it must be what Snake eats after school. Honestly I’m surprised a teenage boy that tall only had yogurt in his sack lunch. Also I’m very pleased to see a tv show that has a character eating from a sack lunch that isn’t part of a plot about how they’re poor. I can’t remember if I brought this up in an earlier Boy Meets World review, but like every single tv show that has kids seems to have a plot where one character is poor, so they start bringing a lunch from home to show that they’re poor, because apparently only very poor people bring their own lunch. Nobody has special dietary needs or food preferences, no, if you bring lunch from home, you’re a dirty poor person.

That same day, Raditch is reading lines from a play. There’s a line with the word “breast” in it, and all the boys giggle, and what I love is that Caitlin and a couple other girls give them totally disgusted looks which is exactly what happens in real life.

The Greek guy behind Melanie pulls on her bra band – not the strap, the part that goes around the stomach/ribs/whatever. What a dickopolous.

LD is annoyed because a bunch of the girls on the swim team are refusing to participate, because they don’t want the boys to see them in their swim suits, or they’re on their period, or whatever. There’s four of them left, at least, which is enough for a relay. But Melanie doesn’t want to participate either, because everyone’s making fun of her already, and she figures it’ll only get worse when she puts on her bathing suit and it becomes clear that she does not in fact have boobs. She also mentions that her bra isn’t stuffed, it’s just a shaper – meaning it’s got some padding in it already and is meant to lift the boobage that’s already there so as to make it appear there is more boobage than there really is. I guess.

Snake’s officially on the soccer team. He is still terrible.

Arthur and Yick are still stalking him. He comes out of a convenience store having just bought a “Super Crunch Delight”. So they go in and buy 20 Super Crunch Delights. I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be a candy bar, because it sounds like one, but it looks like a granola bar or a power bar.

JD accuses Jason of stacking the team by recruiting a very tall person. She’s not wrong.

Snake feels guilty.

Time for the big game… meet… match… race. Jason walks into the locker room and asks if Snake is there. Wheels says “Sure he is, he’s just so thin, you missed him.” This episode has a decent number of funny one-liners. Ha. Well, then, Jason goes looking for Snake.

Why are there posters of buff men wearing tiny swimsuits on the wall in the locker room?

The girls, meanwhile, wish Melanie would change her mind and decide to swim. LD says it’s not big deal, one of the three of them can just swim twice. They don’t look thrilled at this idea, even though that’s exactly what happens at a real swim meet if your relay team is missing people.

Melanie leaves school, and spots Snake, eating granola bars on the stoop. They both wonder why the other one isn’t swimming. Snake explains that the boys just wanted him because he could swim, even though they said they wanted him on the soccer team. He knows they were just trying to bring in a ringer against the girls, and felt that was wrong. Snake and his morals, tch. Snake also mentions that he used to be good at soccer, but ever since he got tall, it’s been hard for him to control his feet properly.

He asks Melanie why she isn’t swimming, and she starts to explain about the bra, but stops because why would you say that to an 8th grade boy. She instead says it’s because Joey and the others keep laughing at her. Snake thinks that’s a dumb excuse. Joey gives him a hard time too, but what’s he supposed to do, hide? Snake’s like two feet taller than Joey, he could just throw him over a fence and no one would know.

So Melanie decides to swim after all, even though it’ll be super embarrassing. Joey yells at her “You’re so flat, the walls are jealous!” Then LD throws him into the pool. Short, skinny kids should not piss off female athletes.

That blur is indeed Joey Jeremiah.

So they swim and it’s thrilling because it’s neck-and-neck the whole way. The girls win even though they were all swimming kind of slow. And then it ends. I guess we all learned an important lesson about… not wearing bras that make you look bigger than you are when you’re on a swim team.

Degrassi The Next Gen has a boys versus girls episode a bit like this, with the twist being that all the girls quit due to poor management rather than because they’re embarrassed. Girls vs Boys sports episodes are always hard to deal with, because on the one hand, girls in sports don’t get any respect, and you want to show that they deserve respect and funding and they’re just as good as the boys. On the other hand, it seems like nearly all Girls vs Boys episodes end in the girl(s) winning, which seems to say more than girls are better than boys, rather than equal. And it’s just science that boys tend to be larger than girls, and the center of gravity and weight distribution is different between the sexes, but then it’s not fair to say that just because you’re a boy, you deserve the funding because you’re automatically better at some sport than a girl.

But they threw Joey into a pool, he for sure deserved that.

Oh and the Arthur/Yick want to get tall plot never really resolved itself either. Arthur and Yick try stretching to force themselves to grow, but of course that doesn’t work. They never learn about puberty or genetics or why Snake doesn’t seem to eat much. Oh well.

Bonus round: I was trying to take a screenshot of Snake catching Arthur and Yick staring at him, and…

106, “Rumor Has It”; Feb 22, 1987

Little known fact that Adele based her hit single ‘Rumour Has It” on this episode of Degrassi.

Actually that is not true at all, please don’t take that seriously.

The description for this episode is hilarious, whether intentionally or not – the episode is about questioning one’s sexuality and the description begins with “Sometimes it’s tough to get a straight answer.” Did they mean it to come off that way? It’s awesome either way.

The episode begins with Ms. Avery talking about women in history. Caitlin mentions to Suzie that Ms. Avery is the best teacher she’s ever had. Then Avery calls Caitlin up and…

A little touchy-feely, there. Avery compliments Caitlin on the wonderful essay she wrote. Then Kathleen just randomly says “Ms. Avery’s a lesbian, you know.” Ms. Avery tells Caitlin “We don’t care what they think, do we?” Then everyone starts saying she’s a lesbian, all talking over each other.

Turns out this was all a dream. A weird dream. A very weird one.

In waking life, Kathleen wonders if Ms. Avery is a lesbian. The girl sitting next to her doesn’t think so, but Kathleen has never seen Avery with any men. That’s not a hugely convincing argument. A lot of my teachers were married and I never saw their spouses. Doesn’t mean they weren’t actually married (although I had my doubts about at least one teacher).

Catilin and Suzie are working in the school’s darkroom. This is the most well-funded school in North America. Anyway Caitlin mentions she had a weird dream, and Suzie’s all “ooooh, you know they say dreams are supposed to reveal your deepest, darkest desires.” That is not what Caitlin wanted to hear. And anyway, that’s not strictly true. Some dreams can be about stuff you really want, sometimes they’re just things you’ve been thinking about. Like I know if I marathon a single tv show or read a lot of manga in one sitting, I usually have dreams about whatever show or manga it was, just because it’s fresh in my head.

In the hallway, one girl says it would be sweet if Avery and Raditch were secretly dating, but Kathleen’s still all “Avery’s a total lesbian”. Melanie tells them to shut up, so Kathleen asks if Melanie’s a lesbian too. Melanie isn’t, but she’s also not prejudiced against gay people. OOOOOH.

“Dangit, Yick.”

Arthur and Yick do a presentation on neighborhood watches. At the end of class, Avery calls Caitlin up and compliments her on the wonderful essay she wrote.

This is actually happening this time, and it freaks Caitlin out. Maybe Caitlin’s epilepsy that she hasn’t been diagnosed with yet is giving her the power to foretell the future in her dreams. I totally read that’s a thing that can happen, epilepsy giving people superpowers. For sure.

Yick can’t find the $20 his dad gave him to buy sneakers. Arthur decides someone stole it. They’re going to investigate.

Caitlin’s hosting a sleepover. Brunette girl who isn’t Melanie is prank calling Raditch. Some lady answered the phone and they think it’s hilarious that Raditch has a girlfriend – or wife, Catilin points out not all married people wear rings. Not-Melanie says into the phone “Hello, is this Mr. Raditch on the line? Then you better get off, there’s a train coming!” That was terrible.

It’s Caitlin’s turn to prank call someone, and she gets Avery. Of course. Avery’s not home, and some lady asks to take a message. Kathleen decides the woman on the phone must be Ms. Avery’s lover. Caitlin still insists Avery isn’t gay, but Kathleen believes the facts are undeniable proof – Avery isn’t married, and she’s always hanging out with some woman, even holding hands with her!

The next day, maybe, Rick give Kathleen and Not Melanie some Not Twizzlers. Avery is dropped off by her lady-friend, and they kiss on the cheek. Kathleen again asserts that Avery is a lesbian.

Rick continues passing out licorice to everyone in school. He says he won $100 in the lottery. Arthur isn’t so sure that’s true, though. If Rick was still living with his dad, he probably would’ve been beaten to a pulp for wasting good money on licorice that he’s just handing out to everyone in school.

Kathleen is STILL going on about Avery being a lesbian. Maybe Kathleen’s a lesbian. She asks in class if Avery has a boyfriend. She says she has hundreds, but wonders what that has to do with class.

Suzie wonders what lesbians do, exactly. It’s 1987 so Suzie can’t just look this up on the internet.

Caitlin still says Avery’s not a lesbian, because lots of people like to touch other people and that doesn’t make all of them gay

Later that night, Caitlin has the dream again where everyone in class call her a lesbian.

And now Kathleen thinks Caitlin is a lesbian, because she and Avery are always hanging out together and because she doesn’t like to change in front of other people for gym class. Kathleen tells Suzie she better be careful, I guess basically because if Caitlin’s a lesbian she’s going to jump Suzie and spread her lesbian germs on her. This gets to Suzie, and she says their photo project is pretty much done anyway so they don’t need to work together anymore. Caitlin’s like “come on” so Suzie agrees to finish up with her.

There’s an announcement over the PA about how all notices and posters must be cleared with the front office before being put up. There are no exceptions, including the “no posters here” notice, and the “no notices to be posted here” poster. It’s not relevant, just funny.

Arthur and Yick are stalking Rick to find proof of him stealing. They’re being weird, and Rick notices.

In the dark room again, Suzie just keeps talking so Caitlin can’t have a chance to go all lesbian on her or whatever. Caitlin notices and asks what’s going on, and Suzie asks her if she’s a lesbian. This makes Caitlin angry and she storms out.

Later she has a heart-to-heart with her stuffed bear about whether or not she’s a lesbian, and if she is, what then? Will she lose all her friends?

Caitlin was super stylish in this episode.

The next day, Caitlin gets asked to stay behind after Avery’s class ends. This is all the proof Kathleen needs that either Caitlin or Ms. Avery is a lesbian.

Actually Avery just noticed something was bugging Caitlin, and asks her what’s going on. Caitlin explains that it’s because people are calling Ms. Avery a lesbian because she’s not married and kisses her friend a lot. She says she and that other woman are housemates, because that’s cheaper than living alone, and that she kisses most of her women-friends, and also that Kathleen must’ve imagined her holding hands with whoever. She doesn’t deny being a lesbian or confirm being straight. And I think that’s part of the point – Avery’s just trying to say that just because someone’s single and kisses their friends, it doesn’t mean they’re gay. And it doesn’t matter if Ms. Avery’s gay anyway.

Caitlin also confesses that people are saying she’s gay too, and she wonders if it’s true because she keeps having weird dreams. Avery tells her that it’s perfectly normal for girls her age to be having weird sexual dreams like that, and it’s nothing to be concerned about. For any youngsters out there reading this who need guidance and are consulting Degrassi rather than a website, what Ms. Avery says is indeed the truth. I know it’s startling when you have a really weird sex dream (or even a normal one, sometimes), but it’s nothing to worry yourself over. It’s definitely worth some consideration if you find you keep having the same sorts of weird sexual dreams all the time, but having a few dreams here or there where in the dream you’re gay or into bondage or a unicorn or something is nothing to get worked up over if you thought for sure you were straight, not into kinky stuff, and a human.

Meanwhile, Rick is tired of Arthur and Yick following him all over the place and demands an explanation. They explain, and Rick says they’re crazy for thinking he stole money. Then Yick finds the money stuck in his locker.

What a broomhead!

Man, I wish I had some hilarious search terms to show you guys before we begin. Most of the search terms people have used to get to this blog are all normal stuff like “topanga lipstick” or “boy meets world cory topanga”. Then there’s the 88 different times people have searched for “arlene grayson”, and the few odd creepy search terms like “young boys in bathing suits” – which I will give the benefit of the doubt and assume the person was looking for art references rather than being a pedophile, because man I know how awkward it is to be searching for stuff like “young boys”, “young boys swimsuits”, “dead foxes”, that kind of stuff, especially in public.

Anyway let me rip the bandaid off and tell you this is the episode where Cory and Topanga break up. Now that’s out of the way, let’s begin:

They just got finished watching this episode.

Amy and Topanga are watching some dramatic, romantic movie about a woman who’s so in love with a man she’ll die in a submarine for him (not joking!)

Cory falls asleep during the movie and Eric kidnaps him. He tells Cory he’s basically whipped, having spent the last three weekends watching sappy movies and making jam with Topanga. He calls Cory and Topanga an old, married couple.

Cory is desperate to hear about Shawn’s weekend. Cory reveals he spent Friday and Saturday double dating with his parents – LAME. But he spent all Sunday at the mall with Topanga. The audience “woooOOOOOOOOooooo”s this for some reason. The audience on this show is so freaking ridiculous. It’s not like he said “It was just me and Topanga, alone” or they were alone at a beach or a hotel room or something. They were in a mall. That’s not exactly a hotbed of romantic activity. Especially these days since they’ve taken all the fun stores out of malls and there’s not really anywhere to hang.

Anyway Shawn tells Cory he should come to this party that night. Cory has plans with Topanga, however. Luckily, Topanga asks Cory if he’d mind if they cancelled that night, because she and “some of the girls” made some other plans. I don’t know who the other girls are supposed to be, Topanga only has one friend who isn’t Cory and she’s not really friends with Shawn. I mean, neither Cory nor Shawn are girls anyway, but you get my drift.

Turner says, “Hey Matthews, wait up. Uh, your paper on ‘Of Mice and Men,’ I’ve got some serious questions about it. Like, uh… where is it?” That was actually funny, good job.

Eric can’t find the book anywhere, even though he’s been in every pet store in town. Turner lets him borrow his copy. Then Eli shows up and asks where Eric’s journalism project is, and then Feeny appears and tells Eric he got an F on his essay on Joan of Arc, partly because Eric assumed the Arc meant she was from Arkansas. Then, surprise of surprises, the chemistry teacher shows up.

THAT GUY IS SO TALL

Anyone else forget this show had a chemistry teacher? Anyway, he tells Eric not to bother showing up to class anymore, he can just blow stuff up at home. Eric tells the guys to cut him some slack already, and leaves. Feeny remarks that the scariest part is, Eric will end up making more money than them one day.

Cut to later, Eric is going to sit down to seriously study. Only he forgot his books at school or on the bus. Amy reminds him he doesn’t take the bus, so Eric says that’s great because it narrows down where the books are. Remember in season 1 when Eric wasn’t exactly smart but he wasn’t so dumb that he forgot he doesn’t take the bus, or forgot what his real middle name was, or whatever else I’m forgetting? Man.

Cory needs help picking a shirt for the party.

Oh my god I have the shirt on the right. Like exactly that shirt.

Cory starts freaking out and rambling, and Shawn asks if everything’s okay with him and Topanga. Cory says Topanga’s fine, it’s him who’s the problem, and he doesn’t really know what it is.

Eric is roaming the school, about to get his books, when he hears Turner arguing with someone about something. He peeks in the door, and finds a poker game.

Eric wants in, and asks them to let him stay and play, and when he loses, he’ll go home and study. Feeny agrees that’s a decent deal, since Eric needs the grades, and they deal him in.

At the party, Some Girl asks for the boys’ Hamilton High ID cards. They’re students of John Adams High, but Cory explains they’re on the guest list, should be under “Shawn Hunter.” Some Girl then assumes Cory is Shawn, and starts fawning over him. Word quickly spreads throughout the party, and Shawn encourages Cory to pretend to be Shawn, because it’s fun and exciting to do that.

Cory goes over to flirt with some girls.

Yes, he did a Fonzie impression, although he thought he was doing a Shawn impression.

Meanwhile, Eric’s killing at poker. Eli believes he’s cheating but can’t figure out how. Eric wishes they’d just admit he’s good at something. Feeny’s just like “Shut up, the more we play, the more chance there is that he’ll lose and leave.”

Meanwhile… again… Cory’s living it up. Shawn tells him he heard there’s some exotic French girl, from France, that Cory oughtta check out. Cory isn’t sure he wants to, since he has Topanga. Shawn says he can live a little tonight and go back to being faithful to Topanga tomorrow. Besides, it’s not like he’s going to really do anything with French Girl From France.

Meanwhile AGAIN, Eric’s still winning. He knocks over a bowl of pretzels, and when told to pick up the pretzels, he is able to tell exactly how many fell on the floor. He also knows how many grains of salt are on all the pretzel sticks. This is too much for the guys, concluding Eric must’ve been counting cards or something, referencing the movie Rain Man – which is a reference I didn’t get until a few years ago, and is a movie I have yet to see. All of them except the chemistry teacher leave. Chemistry teacher proposes that Eric come with him to Atlantic City – which is basically Las Vegas but smaller and in the northeastern U.S.

Feeny comes back and tells the chemistry teacher he’s being ridiculous, and he can’t have a member of his staff acting like that. Chemistry Teacher says that’s fine, and quits, and then asks Eric if he’s still up for going to Atlantic City.

At the dance, some girls are complaining about all the guys being all over that French girl. “It’s just a stupid foreign accent!” Come on, that’s all you’ve got? She’s French. Say something about how you heard that French women never shave their legs or armpits. Tell all the guys that. Tell them she smells like old cheese and cowardice. Come on!

[Fun fact! France, despite having a stereotype reputation of being a country of "cheese-eating surrender-monkeys", actually has more military victories than it has losses. Its reputation of always surrendering all the time came about as a kind of propaganda during World War II, where France did pretty poorly because they were still suffering really badly from the aftermath of World War I. The country had spent a lot of money and land on WWI, and lost a huge number of its population and hadn't really recovered from any of that yet, but people are just grumpy and rude and decided to ignore all that and just accuse French people of being cowards.]

Well she’s wearing a leather jacket too! It’s a match made in heaven.

Cory approaches French Girl. Some Guy talks to her in a terrible French accent, asking if she’d like to dance. She replies “oui” and turns.

French Girl looks a lot like Topanga! Whoa!

Actually it IS Topanga. Cory is not pleased. He asks what she thinks she’s doing. When she doesn’t answer, Cory demands she speak to him. Some Guy says to lay off her, she doesn’t speak English. Topanga then starts speaking in English and Some Guy now believes he can understand French.

Hey, Shawn can speak French. Why didn’t he go after French Girl before we knew she was Topanga?

Anyway Topanga says she and her friends decided it would be fun to come to another school’s party, and that’s why she’s there. Cory gets mad at her for pretending to be another person, saying there’s nothing wrong with being yourself! Then Some Girl comes over and calls him Shawn. So Cory and Topanga go outside to talk.

They realize they’re in a rut. They haven’t had fun together in a long time, and Cory mentions that he’s jealous of seeing all the fun Shawn and Eric have on their respective dates. Topanga asks if they’re breaking up. Cory insists they aren’t, he doesn’t want to, and he still cares about her. Topanga doesn’t want to either, because people always end up hating each other after they break up, but she says it sounds like they actually are breaking up. Cory says they’ll never break up, and Topanga thinks maybe the people who end up hating each other are the ones who waited too long to break up. That’s actually a really reasonable idea, sort of like if you’re lactose intolerant, if yous top eating ice cream right away you’re fine, but if you eat like 5 quarts in one day you’ll end up really sick (I mean if you ate that much of anything in one day you’d get sick… this metaphor turned weird).

So Topanga says she wants to still care about Cory and be friends with him, so maybe they should break up sooner rather than later. They walk off in opposite directions.

Topanga runs back, saying she thinks they’re making a mistake.

Realizing Cory has left and presumably thinks differently, she turns and sadly walks away again.

Then Cory runs back, with the same idea, but finding no Topanga, sits sadly on the bench.

At least he doesn’t sit here and grow old and die waiting for her to come back.

Over the credits, a sad song plays over a montage of adorable Cory/Topanga moments.

All 12 episodes they spent together.

Okay she was in 46 episodes, but you know how many of those they were dating in? 10. She wasn’t even in two whole episodes where she and Cory were dating. And a bunch of the episodes she was in, she didn’t really need to be there, like in Train of Fools or Rave On.

What I’m saying is, looking back as I review this show episode by episode, it seems like their relationship wasn’t as long-lasting and beautiful as I thought it was, making this breakup less heart-wrenching than I though.

On the plus side, this leads to a really great episode towards the end of the season. And a really weird time travel episode which it seems isn’t the crossover episode I thought it was.

Anyway the episode ends like this:

:(

The science teacher, by the way, was played by Jim Jansen, who has a long list of credits to his name, but sadly most are one- or two-episode parts, or credits like “Second Man” or “Waiter #1″. He was pretty entertaining in this episode, plus he’s tall. If I had a tv show I was developing, I’d love to hire this guy for a main role.

It always makes me really sad, though, whenever I see an actor who has a huge list of credits that are almost entirely bit parts. I wonder, are they filled with self-loathing about never being good enough for a longterm role, only being good enough for a glorified extra? Or are they totally fine with it, because that way they can still act but have normal lives where paparazzi aren’t chasing them all over the place?

It was not easy finding this episode online, I tell you what.

Well actually someone just posted a link to it in the iMDB forums, but like 3 hours after I first went looking for it.

Also I like that this is coinciding with my recap of the episode where Cory and Topanga break up. WILL THEY EVER GET BACK TOGETHER??? OMG WE’LL NEVER KNOW.

This episode starts with the cast asking if we would like to watch Girl Meets World a month before it airs. To rephrase, the Girl Meets World episode is asking if we want to watch Girl Meets World. Thanks.

Also I’d like to explain that I’m recapping as I watch. I’m not watching and then watching it again, so all of my reactions and guesses are completely 100% genuine and not me making jokes when I know how it’s going to turn out, like I do in the “Preggers” recap of Glee.

This is irreelvant, but I just said “Preggers” in my head like I was a pirate. “Arrrr, pregerrrssss, matey.” I’ve been kind of lightheaded all day, I think this cold is making me crazier than I realized.

Anyway.

Ah. It wouldn’t be a cheesy sitcom set in New York or San Francisco if it didn’t start with an establishing shot of a house.

We dive right in to the shenanigans. Blonde girl is trying to get brunette girl to sneak out with her. Brunette girl is nervous.

They’re taking the subway without permission even though they’re like 12. Also blonde girl has a really deep voice for being a 7th grade girl. No wonder her singing wasn’t awful. [How's that for a really weird conclusion to make?]

Blonde girl doesn’t trust brunette to not give away what they’re doing if they leave by the front door, so they sneak out by the window. This was in the first preview clip of the show I saw so I already know what happens. EXCITING.

On cue, they run into brunette/Riley’s dad on the first escape or whatever. OMG IT’S CORY NO WAY WHAT A PLOT TWIST.

Cory is now being played by Bob Saget as Danny Tanner.

The audience gives a mildly enthusiastic cheer. Aw man, this isn’t going to be like Boy Meets World at all where the audience would go completely insane for a 12 year old in a swimsuit, is it? That still really weirds me out. The Boy Meets World studio audience was always just super into the show, I guess.

Well anyway, Cory explains that this isn’t Riley’s world. It’s his world. This is the most abrupt introduction of dialogue. Seriously, he climbs into the room and is like “THIS ISN’T YOUR WORLD, IT’S MINE” only less caps lock-y.

He goes on to say if it were Riley’s world, then Maya – aka blonde girl – would already have Riley on the subway. But she doesn’t. So it’s his world. Riley asks how long she has to stay in her father’s world, and he says “Until you make it yours.” UGH LAME. What is it with this show? I already complained about this is a news post, but… UGH. What’s with this show and beating us over the head with “world?” Why are all the episode titles “Girl Meets [whatever]” when Boy Meets World always had puns or references as its episode titles? What’s this “it’s YOUR world” nonsense? Ugggh.

Well I’m a minute into the show and already at almost 600 words, so that’s a problem. I mean that’s like 1/3 to 1/4 of the length of a regular Boy Meets World recap and I’m only a minute in.

Riley agrees to make it her own world, and asks “If you’ll still be there for me?” The Topanga shows up and says they’ll always be there for her. When the rain starts to pour, like they’ve been there before… Wait…

So Riley and Maya go take the subway. Okay. Also there seems to be a picture of Feeny on a soda machine. That’s weird. I couldn’t get a cap of it.

On the subway, Maya is surprised by Riley using lip gloss. Riley explains that she’s trying to reinvent herself. Seeing as she’s 12 or 13, using lip gloss is a completely logical step here. I mean that seriously. Maya – who, incidentally, is wearing an AC/DC shirt. Are there a lot of 12 year old fans of AC/DC? Hm – points out some cute guy is looking at them. Riley thinks he’s super cute, and Maya has a plan.

Cory later tells him he is a very good-looking boy, and I agree.

So she goes over, sits down next to the kid, and does the whole “relationship in 30 seconds” schtick – she introduces herself, becomes a clingy jealous girl, and breaks up with him in one sentence, comes back to Riley, and tells her he’s available. I didn’t really describe the scene well, but it was really funny, actually. Color me surprised.

Riley’s nervous, and wants to be more like Maya, so Maya tells her to stop thinking. Then the train stops and Riley stumbles backwards halfway across the train car and falls into the guy’s lap. Super realistic, yo.

Then Jackée Harry shows up and makes Riley move so she can sit down next to a kid who’s like 30 years younger than she is.

Oh holy cow the guy who plays cute guy (Lucas) is 16, or was 15 when they were filming. I was all like “Oh wow he’s so tall for a 12 year old!” but I guess he’s not twelve.

Then Riley starts freaking out – what if that was the best thing that ever happens to her and her life is all downhill from there? Man, welcome to adulthood. Then the train stops again and she stumbles back half a car length and lands on Jackée‘s lap, but she picks Riley up and puts her on Lucas. If this show were Degrassi or a fanfiction Lucas probably would’ve gotten an erection and this would’ve been more awkward than charming.

Also I don’t get why the train kept stopping. I mean, I say it stops, but it’s more like it put on the brakes and then kept going. It didn’t actually stop anywhere. It’s weird.

OPENING CREDITS.

The opening credits aren’t especially interesting, but the credits font and the CGI paper plane flying all over are pretty reminiscent of early Boy Meets World. Also, Topanga.

Maya didn’t do the homework. Doesn’t even know where her textbooks are. Sort of like how Shawn had one textbook that was still in its original plastic wrap.

Riley tells Maya that she totally has to do her homework because their teacher is insane.

Actually he sort of looks like Tony Shaloub.

A chalkboard? In 2014? Is that still a thing? Some of the classrooms in my high school still had chalkboards in 2008, but the school also had a massive mold problem and a lot of the air conditioners in the rooms smelled like rat pee when you turned them on.

Anyway Cory’s a history teacher, just like Feeny. I think that’s because history and English are the best subjects to have someone teach so the lessons can be relevant to whatever drama the students are going through, and it’s easier to write about people doing Shakespeare plays than it is to have them learning derivative calculus.

Case in point, they’re learning about the Civil War. Cory asks if anyone knows anything about it, and Riley answers that it’s a “war we fought against ourselves.” When Cory asks if that means she studied it, she answers “No, I’m living it!” Ugh shut up Riley.

But really, let’s take a break for a minute. What exactly is she talking about? What civil war is she fighting against herself or others? Does she just mean her desire to be cool versus her being a neurotic loser? Or what? What did she mean by that?

Minkus… er, Farkle says they should get back to studying or something, then randomly says that he’s been in love with Riley since the first grade, but is now also in love with Maya and hopes she’ll be the first Mrs. Farkle.

Wait, does that mean Farkle doesn’t have a mother? Every woman married to a Farkle man kept her last name?

???

There are some people saying he’s actually Minkus’s son, but if that’s the case and his name is actually Farkle Minkus, why did he just say “Mrs. Farkle”? They filmed this after they changed a lot of stuff from the pilot so I don’t think it’s just that they’re retconning him into Minkus’s son later…?

Anyway, Cory declares this the greatest predicament of the ages – what to do if you’re in love with two very different women. Riley protests that she and Maya aren’t all that different. Oh, Riley.

Farkle explains they’re actually really different. Also Cory’s name plate on his desk has Farkle’s name on the other side. Weird.

Cory goes up and explains that bad things in history happen when people don’t know who they are. I don’t know, I’m pretty sure Hitler knew who he was and that whole World War II thing was pretty bad, eh?

That Lucas kid comes into the classroom. He’s a new student from Austin, Texas. Luckily there was exactly one empty desk for him that happened to be behind Riley’s seat.Ah, and for the curious, Girl Meets World has the problem Boy Meets World and many other show have – that is, there’s only like 9 seats in the classroom. I know it’s to cut down on the size of the set and the number of extras, but the only time I’ve ever been in a class that small was in college. My 1st grade class wasn’t even that small.

Cory tells the class to read pages 1-48 of their text book, and also that their homework is to write a three-page essay on anything. Ugh man, I’m not even his student and I think that’s terrible. Three whole pages?? Gross.

Maya says something about protesting homework. They’re always learnings tuff in the classroom, they deserve nights off! She gets the class to start chanting “No homework, more freedom!” Riley agrees, and Cory’s all “No, Riley! That’s not who you are!” Then most of the class leaves while chanting. Unfortunately this only ends with a lame Minkus… Farkle gag where he passes out after debating whether to pursue an education or women, and doesn’t end with Cory issuing a detention or suspension to everyone who left, or threatening to fail them so they have to repeat their year. Or you know, any authoritative thing. At least when they did the protest walk-out on Boy Meets World, they were protesting Turner taking back a promise he made, and not just objecting to having homework in general.

Riley and Cory come home and tattle on each other. Topanga asks why Riley wants to be Maya, and Riley explains it’s because Maya’s cool and GAWD YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ME AT ALL *storms off to room*

Topanga puts on a mocking voice and says “Oh let’s get married, let’s have a kid, let’s have another kid!” Cory replies “Well, you listened to me.” I chuckled at that.

Riley monologues a bunch of questions about if she’ll ever be cool. I don’t even care anymore Riley, we’re almost 11 minutes in and I’m already sick of you.

Little brother replies with the questions “Do bears know how to smile? Why is cake so delicious? Will my drawings ever get any better?” I’m honestly more curious to know the answers to those questions than to know if Riley will ever be cool.

Riley asks if he’s making fun of her. He says no, they just think alike because they’re twins. I thought he was being sarcastic, but when Riley says they aren’t twins he runs out of the room screaming for their mom.

Is… is that the same school? The same school as on BMW? Hm.

…I guess not. I’m disappointed.

At lunch, Maya observes that Lucas can’t find a place to sit. So Maya scoots over to indicate there’s totally a place for him! Except Minkle sits down instead and says something about meatloaf versus pot pie or something and it’s a metaphor. Then he leaves, and Riley scoots over and starts freaking out about zzzzzzzzzzzz

Oh sorry, I mean it’s the same “oh I’m a loser but I like him blahblahIdon’tcare”. Then Lucas sits down next to them. Yay! Then Cory kneels next to them because he forgot this is America and young women are allowed to sit with boys at lunch time.

Cory just starts babbling about Texas and asks what city of Texas is closest to Mexico. Lucas says it’s El Paso and Cory says “Great! Let’s go there right now!” and he drags Lucas in his chair out of the cafeteria. Holy crap, Cory is insane.

Maya and Riley put their lunch trays away even though they literally only just sat down and haven’t eaten anything, and Maya asks if Riley did the homework. Riley’s like “What’re you, crazy? Of course not!” Except she totally did and she also did Maya’s and liked it. That’s so dumb. Of course she did the homework for the class that her father teaches!  Geez.

Maya tells her to not do that, and to let Maya be herself. Then Farkus shows up with Angel Food cake and Devil’s Food cake and Maya’s all “Let me guess who each cake is for” – obviously since Maya is a Bad Girl she gets the Devil’s Food. Except not, because apparently he just really wanted two pieces of cake because he was hungry, and he’s not sharing. This show is really weirding me out, on the one hand there’s a lot of repetitive dullness, on the other hand there’s some decent jokes.

Also all these seventh graders are super stylish. I remember when I was in middle school, it was mostly just a small group of 8th graders who were dressed so finely, everyone else was just like polo shirts and graphic tees and hooded sweatshirts. I guess it’s not a crime to have well-dressed tv characters, though.

IS IT?? What if it was? Poor Downton Abbey would go bankrupt.

In class, Maya reveals that she didn’t do the homework because she’s protesting, just like we found out literally like four minutes ago. SUCH DRAMA WOW. Then Riley says she also didn’t do the homework because she’s cool.

Then Maya tells everyone who did do the homework, which is everyone but her, to put their essays on their desks. She collects all of them and uses a sparkler from Farkle’s essay -

- and is about to set the papers on fire. Now, I’m no expert, but probably a single sparkler isn’t enough to set a stack of 30 or so pieces of paper on fire? Maybe the top couple? Cory takes the papers away just in time, but then the sparkler sets the sprinklers off. Everybody but the named characters run out of the room. And Lucas covers Riley with his jacket AWWWWW.

You know apparently real overhead sprinklers spew out more of  a black sludge than actual water? I understand why they never have it that way on tv, but it’s one of those things that because it’s never portrayed accurately in media, people sort of misunderstand it in real life.

Cory gives Maya detention. Riley says she deserves detention too, but Cory says she didn’t do anything, but Maya did. Maya has to see the principal. WHO COULD THE PRINCIPAL BE?? Haha, I hope it’s Frankie Stechino. We don’t see the principal in this episode so honestly who knows? Maybe it’s Minkus! That would be way more believable than literally anything else in this episode.

Cory gives Maya a talk in the hallway after telling Riley that she needs to stay lame so she can reign Maya in from her crazies (I am paraphrasing, hopefully that was obvious). He tells Maya that friends are supposed to help each other out of trouble, not into it, and it’s always been “Riley and Maya” not “Maya and Maya” or something. Maya gets all sad and says “I have nobody at home who helps me with my homework” and then she leaves. Eh… I never got help with my homework, like ever, so… okay?

On the subway, Maya says Cory is going to make Riley end their friendship. Riley doesn’t believe it because whatever. Maya’s like “I’m no good for you, you don’t go as far as I do.” A few minor changes and this could turn into a conversation about someone dumping someone else because they don’t want to have sex yet.

Jackee Harry is on the subway again, making commentary. She calls Maya and Riley cute little honeybees and asks where their hunk is. What even the heck.

The subway stops where Riley’s supposed to get off, and Maya tells her to leave, this is her stop, because she doesn’t go as far as Maya does. Haha it’s like a double-meaning or something. She shoves Riley off the train, and the door closes. But then Riley pulls the doors back open because the subway didn’t immediately start moving, and Jackee Harry says she pushed the doors open with the power of love. Is Jackee Harry’s character supposed to be this creepy in hindsight? She’s way too involved with these 12 year olds she doesn’t know.

Riley says something I can’t remember, and Maya says she’s only pushing her away because Maya’s no good for her. Some minor changes and this could turn into a scene from Twilight. Riley says only she (Riley) can decide what’s best for her (Riley) and she pulls Maya off the subway and they run off together, and because of all these shenanigans this train and all the following ones were off-schedule for the rest of the day. THANKS, RILEY.

They go to the Matthews home and Riley gives a speech about friends, and being herself or whatever, and she says her civil war is over, and she won. Okay.

The next scene, Cory gives Riley her own metro pass so she can take the subway whenever she wants, as a 12 year old in New York City. She gets on the train and it says one of the next stops is the world. I know it’s a reference to the show’s theme, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there actually was a World, New York. There are places called Egypt, Norway, Scotland, and Texas in New York state. Too bad Texas, New York will never come up in the show. Ah, well.

We don’t see the cool adventures Riley and Maya have, just the train coming back to the same place where Cory, Topanga, and the little brother are. Riley’s all “You’re still here??” and Topanga says “We said we’d always be here for you.”

Cory makes some speech about finding your place in the world, and, get this, guys:

“Well done, Mr. Matthews”

Apparently that wasn’t a vending machine I saw before but a “Stay in school” poster. I guess that makes more sense. Would’ve been a weird but funny joke if Feeny’s face was just on random background decor throughout the series.

So anyway, that’s the end.

I’m not overly impressed.

Sabrina Carpenter, who plays Maya, was really entertaining, but I’m not really confident in Rowan Blanchard (Riley) so far. I’m not expecting an Emmy-winning performance from her, but I think even the kid who played the brother, in his short appearance, was a better actor, and he’s half her age. Certainly there’s still time for her to prove herself, or improve her acting. I forget which show it was, but for the whole first season all the acting was pretty bad, but then they came back for season 2 and they were suddenly all really good actors. So maybe that’s the case here.

And if you couldn’t tell, I was really bored by this storyline. Riley wants to be cool, Cory tells her to find her place in the world, then tell her to be herself, but she still wants to be cool until Maya says she’s a bad influence on Riley. It was almost the same scene just repeated like 6 times. Super boring. This episode really could’ve benefited from a subplot. Nothing too complicated, maybe something as basic as the time Morgan put her doll in the toaster oven and then didn’t like the career-girl doll Amy bought her. Something like that with Topanga and the little brother, so we could’ve gotten to know them a bit better (and maybe learned his name), and it would’ve cut a minute or two out of the really repetitive “This is who I am!” “No it isn’t!” “Find yourself! Except if you think yourself is like this” plot.

I don’t really know how to qualify this episode, either. It’s not the pilot episode, because they had to completely refilm it after they cut out the older brother character. Maybe if he’d still have been in it, the Riley plot wouldn’t have been so repetitive and boring. I still think it was dumb to have cut him out. Maybe they did it because they didn’t want to rehash the old Matthews clan with having a sporty, handsome older brother, but just because there WAS an older brother doesn’t mean he would’ve been an Eric clone. There was definitely a lot of opportunity for plotlines with there being a brother who’s one year older than the main character. Like I mentioned in a different post, they could’ve had a deal where Maya gets a crush on him, but he doesn’t like her at first, until she gets a little older, and they start dating and it freaks Riley out even though at first she was totally okay with it. And one episode could’ve been about them trying to hang out like they used to, but they realize their interests are just so different now that they can’t really be buds like they were when they were younger, and they learn to accept that or something.

I guess it’s too late now. If I had the power to rewrite and recast a television just by writing about it, Glee would be like 90% better by now.

Maybe the first season DVD release of the show will have the original pilot on it. I would very much like to watch it after seeing this.

Objectively, this was okay for a first episode. It had some issues – mostly related to pacing and character development (Farkle is bizarrely the only character who seems to be a complete person, despite appearing to be a one-trope pony) – but a couple decent jokes.

Speaking of Farkle and jokes,when Cory is giving Maya the metropass, for some reason Farkle and Lucas are there with them just for moral support. Lucas sees what he thinks is a horse in the subway tunnel, and Finklus points out it’s actually rat. Then these two supermodels show up and say “Hi, Farkle” really flirtatiously and he says “Hello, ladies” back at them. Why can’t this show be Farkle Meets World or something?

Speaking of, the title of this episode doesn’t make sense. Yes Riley meets a boy, but he was pretty irrelevant to the plot. Like he literally did not need to be in this episode. If you can take out what the title’s referring to and the plot of the episode still mostly makes sense, you have a problem.

I still say they at least did well in casting some kids who look like they could be Danielle Fishel’s and Ben Savage’s offspring.

Now for those of you who don’t have access to Disney Channel or don’t want to look for the link in the Girl Meets World iMDB messageboards that I used, the episode will be available on iTunes in mid-June, I think for free but I’m not sure. It will also premiere on tv on June 27, so it should be easier to find illegally uploaded online after that, not that you should watch pirated tv shows or anything! Hahaha. I literally just admitted that I watched a pirated version.

Gee what could this episode possibly be about based on the title?

This was the first episode of Glee I ever saw, so it’s sort of special to me. Also it helps that it’s an AMAZING episode. Makes the contrast between this and all-time ratings low season 5 finale even stranger.

Speaking of which, a lot of people like to defend the later seasons of Glee over-saturating us with Rachel by saying the show was ALWAYS about Rachel. Well let’s recap the first three episodes:

1. Schue struggles between what’s doing right for his family and his music- and teaching-passion, Emma struggles with having feelings for a married man. Rachel doesn’t have a line of dialogue until about halfway through. It’s Rachel’s fault the whole show started, but she’s definitely a secondary character in the first episode. Schue as the A-plot, Rachel and Finn are tied at C-plots (no B plot??)
2. Schue again struggles between doing right for his family and his passion for music and teaching. Rachel struggles with being popular. This episode is definitely Rachel-focused after the main character of Schue. Schue A-plot, Rachel B-plot.
3. Schue struggles between… I don’t even know. Mercedes deals with not wanting to feel alone and gross, and ends up crushing on a gay kid. Schue A plot, Mercedes B plot, Rachel’s more like a D plot.
4. Okay this is the episode we’re reviewing today. It’s hard to figure out who has the A, B, and C plot, but it seems like most of the focus is on Kurt, secondary on Terri, Finn, Puck, and Quinn, and tertiary on Schue, Sue, and Rachel.

Rachel has undeniably been an important factor in Glee since the beginning, but the Front 13 of Glee’s first season are pretty clearly meant to have Schue as the main character. So no, Rachel wasn’t always the main focus of Glee [as I quoted in the episode 2 review, "Contrary to your beliefs, not everything is all about you."]

I suppose I should wait until later to get into this more, but I think this is what happened: People got tired of the adult characters on Glee, Ryan Murphy loves Lea Michele so her character got more screentime. Since Rachel then got all the screentime, more people started enjoying her character because NO ONE ELSE EVER GOT A STORYLINE. Or they’d have the B plot in an episode and that would be it for the season. So basically we had no choice other than to like Rachel, so then she got even MORE exposure because everyone liked her, and then because EVEN MORE plots were focused on her at the expense of the other characters, we were left with a bunch of sad, empty background characters, and Rachel, who eventually everyone but a vocal minority grew to hate. It sure is a coincidence that after Glee started focusing EVEN MORE on Rachel in season 5, the show’s ratings started drastically declining (they hadn’t been great in season 5 before, but it was more like treading water as opposed to drowning).

BUT that’s later, we’re still in the good part of the show. Maybe in another year or two when I finally get around to reviewing those episodes, I’ll have calmed down enough so my review won’t just dissolve in a pile of acidic rage. Or maybe I’ll have forgotten how bad it was and the review will be even worse. Ah well, we’ll see.

We begin with Kurt, Tina, and Brittany dancing to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies”. Ah man, I can’t wait for a few years from now when people reminisce about how ridiculous it was that like every person ont he planet did their own parody of that dance.

Also, fun fact, the actress who plays Brittany, Heather Morris, is a professional dancer and was a backup dancer on one of Beyonce’s tours, and was brought on the Glee set specifically to teach everyone how to do the Single Ladies dance. Then they needed a third cheerleader and just decided to bring her on. Also she was a dancer in some episodes of Eli Stone, the show I mentioned last week that Victor Garber/Will’s dad was also on.

Kurt’s dad, Mike O’Malley, turns off the music. He’s home unexpectedly early. He asks Kurt what the heck he’s wearing, and Kurt says it’s a unitard. Guys wear them because they absorb sweat or something. Tina chimes in with “F-f-football!” (did I mention she speaks with a stutter? She’s had like three lines so far), and Brittany says Kurt’s totally on the football team now, in fact he’s the kicker, who is the smallest guy on the field. In addition to being Brittany’s first lines on the show, that is also the extent of my knowledge of football, despite the fact that I was in my high school’s marching band and thus have sat through at least 30 games of football.

Kurt’s dad (Burt) approves, having been on his own high school football team. Then he asks if either of the girls is Kurt’s girlfriend. Kurt slaps Tina’s butt, following with “But I’m not ready to be exclusive yet.” Friendly reminder that Kurt is in fact gay, so he most certainly does not have a girlfriend. Burt says that’s cool and reminds Kurt to get him a ticket to the next game. Kurt panics, since he’s not on the team at all.

Here’s something to ponder real quickly – why did Kurt recruit Brittany and Tina to help him with this dance? He’s not friends with either of them. I could see if maybe he was talking to Mercedes about filming himself doing the Single Ladies dance, and Mercedes didn’t want to participate because she was busy or not confident about looking good in a unitard/leotard/whatevertard, and Brittany offered to help out because she’s very nice and friendly like that. But why’s Tina there? Just because they needed another girl and Kurt hates Rachel, Santana, and Quinn at this point?

And why were they doing the dance in the first place?

Meanwhile, Terri’s sister Kendra is coaching Terri and Will in Lamaze breathing. We learn at this point that Terri’s supposed to be four months pregnant. WOW. How much time passed exactly between the first episode and this moment? I mean, “Acafellas” definitely implies there’s some real passage of time going on (Terri trying desperately to get pregnant for real, and some other comments suggest it’s been maybe at least two weeks since Acafellas was formed). So does that mean the show is currently taking place in October? That sort of screw up the rest of the Front 13′s timeline.

[Er, sorry, if you're not familiar with the terminology. Basically, on American television, the Front 13 refers to either the initial number of episodes a network will order before they decide if they want to pay for a full 22 episodes, OR it refers to the first 13 episodes that a season airs before winter hiatus. Then there's the Back 9, which refers to either the additional purchase of episodes to pad the season out to a full 22, OR the 9 episodes that air following winter hiatus. There are some shows that don't have 22 episodes and don't have overly long hiatuses, so the front 13/back 9 isn't like an all-encompassing industry standard, but it applies to Glee, especially in this case.

To further continue this explanation, Glee got an initial 13 episode order, so the show aired from September to December. It got picked up for a full season, so they spent some time between December and April filming the back 9 episodes. The reason the Front 13 timeline gets confused but not the entire season is because, again, the first 13 episodes end in December. According to the rest of the show's seasons, the 13th episode would've taken place in about November or December. So if it's already October in the show, that means the next 9 episodes only take place in like two months, which doesn't make any sense in context of those shows.

According to the later seasons, the Back 9 of this season is already airing messed up - the 14th episode premiered in April and the 22nd in June, but with the timeline in the other seasons, the 22nd episode actually should take place in March.

I have spent an ungodly amount of time discussing this, I apologize.]

Kendra wants to teach Will how to massage gas bubbles out of Terri’s stomach. Terri hurriedly insists that Will make her a sandwich instead. Once Will’s out of the room, Terri starts freaking out at Kendra. Kendra thinks she’s just worried about how tough having the baby will be, and assures her it’s fine as long as she gets an epidural, she’s just making it sound worse than it is so Will feels bad and will do anything Terri asks.

Terri ignores this and asks Kendra if she can keep a secret. Kendra assumes Terri is about to confess the baby is black, which would be a weird thing to automatically assume even if there had been more than one black character on the show so far.

No, Terri reveals that she’s not actually pregnant. She goes on to panic about how she’s been lying because Will already has one foot out the door and she doesn’t want to lose him. She also has no idea what she’s going to do when it comes time to give birth to the baby, and decides she’s just gonna tell Will right then what’s going on. Kendra stops her and instead suggests they steal a baby.

I believe I mentioned in her first appearance that Kendra’s a little crazy?

It’s lunchtime. Every teacher in the school has the same lunch period, I guess. Schue sits with Emma and Tanaka, to the displeasure of Tanaka. Emma says she was watching the news the night before, and found out there’s a new segment on the news. It’s called Sue’s Corner.

“And that’s how Sue ‘C’s’ it.”

Sue shows up in the room at that point and says she got the job because she didn’t want to be some loser stuck as a mentally ill (Emma), fat (I forget her actual insult for Tanaka here), perm-getting (Schuester – yeah, I don’t get it either) teacher for the rest of her life.

Sounds like it’s time for Will to reevaluate his life AGAIN. Or maybe not, I don’t know.

Rachel’s mad because Schue gave the solo to a West Side Story song to Tina and not to her. Rachel’s felt a deep, personal connection to the role of Maria since she was a one year old, and points out Natalie Wood was a Jew, which is both wrong (Natalie Wood was a Russian Orthodox Christian) and nonsensical (just because you’re Jewish doesn’t mean you get to take on every role every held by a Jewish person, especially since the character of Maria is Catholic anyway).

Rachel then accuses Schue of trying to punish her, just like she did in the other episode when Schue gave the solo to Quinn Fabray. Instead of calling out Rachel on being so selfish and repetitive, he explains that he’s trying to get the glee club kids to come out of their little boxes, and try something new. He does call out Rachel on being pretty rude and insensitive to Tina, who might’ve been happy about getting her first solo.

Rachel’s all “Tina knows how much I respect her, but she also knows that THIS ROLE IS MINE”. No one really reacts and Mercedes questions why she got cast as Jet (not to racially stereotype, but it probably would make more sense to have the black girl playing  Puerto Rican rather than Polish person, but maybe that’s part of the whole “getting out of our boxes” thing). Rachel turns and storms out after this, Tina doesn’t say anything but looks unhappy, and Artie says that the more Rachel storms out, the less impact is has. I like that it’s only the fourth episode and pretty much the entire club is totally fed up with Rachel already. Boy, what would it be like if Rachel’s selfish “me me me” attitude continued on throughout the series despite apparent character growth? Haha, that would be STUPID and only a show that wants to completely tank its rating in a short amount of time would do something so foolish!

Who the heck is that one guy? The right guy in the red shirt is Tanaka, but who’s the left guy?

Kurt asks Finn to get him an audition for the football team. Audition was his word, not mine, although I did forget what the actual term is. Trying out? Is that it? Oh, Finn just said it, so I guess so.

Kurt’s trying out for the position of kicker. He wants to use his music, but Finn’s like “what no”, but Kurt’s used to having the music on while he rehearses (again, his word), so he’s doing it. Puck is then all “blah what are you, gay” and “he doesn’t belong here blah”.

Tanaka announces to the team that their previous kicker keeps losing games for them, so he’s been demoted to waterboy, and the next guy who can kick a… field goal? through the… thing… the goal thing will be the team’s kicker. Kurt announces “Hi I’m Kurt Hummel and I’ll be auditioning for the role of kicker.” The other dudes get a chuckle out of that, because it is actually pretty funny, and also they’re all stupid and homophobes and whatever.

Kurt prepares to kick.

The boombox, after a few seconds, starts playing “Single Ladies”. Oddly, it just starts randomly in the middle of the song rather than at the beginning. Also Kurt has a boombox in 2009.

He does part of the dance, then kicks the ball.

Straight through the… goal posts, that’s what it is! Goal posts! Yes!

Er anyway, perfect kick. It’s so amazing that all the guys stop laughing at him, and one guy drops his helmet.

Tanaka asks if he can do that during a game with 10 gorillas bearing down on him. Kurt says that sounds like fun, and asks if he can have his music at the games. Tanaka says as long as he kicks like that, he can wear a tutu if he wants.

Look, it’s one of those actors who appear in everything but you can’t remember his name!

The station manager is delivering fanmail and also hatemail to Sue at school for some reason. It turns out he’s also there because his daughter is concerned about how all the top cheerleaders are defecting to the glee club, and he’s concerned if that keeps happening, there won’t be enough talent in the cheerleading squad and they can’t take Nationals so Sue will be a disappointment and they won’t keep her on the air. I don’t know what the issue is, you’re allowed to have more than one extracurricular activity and still be good at both. And it’s only three cheerleaders anyway.

Firefox, why is cheerleader a word but cheerleading isn’t?

Anyway, Quinn’s pregnant.

Finn’s the father, because who else could it be? Finn protests, pointing out they never actually had sex. Quinn reminds him of the previous month, when they were making out in a hot tub and Finn got too turned on and ejaculated even though he was thinking of hitting the mailman again. Finn, showing surprising intelligence, also points out that they were wearing swimsuits. The science here does not seem entirely sound, Finn implies through the words I just wrote that he didn’t actually say. Quinn’s doctor I guess said that the hot tub was at like the perfect temperature for sperm to travel.

To be fair, sperm can actually live outside the human body for a period of time. However, it’s INCREDIBLY unlikely that a sperm could travel through swim trunks, swim through hot water, go through a women’s swimsuit, and into the vagina. I think there’s probably a higher chance of shuffling cards and ending up with all the cards arrange by suit, with values lowest to highest (theoretically possible, but come on, that’s never gonna happen). And very hot water can actually kill sperm almost instantly (that’s why if you’re a man trying to get your wife pregnant, they advise you not to take warm baths or sit in hot tubs).  And if the water is treated with chemicals (for instance, pool or hot tub chemicals), then forget it.

I have to agree with what I said earlier (I am agreeing with myself?), the science here is very fishy.

Oh also Quinn isn’t going to get an abortion. It always bugs me whenever a character is unexpectedly pregnant on a show, they always HAVE to mention that they’re having the baby/not getting a you know (they almost never say the word “abortion” on tv). The reason this bugs me is because no on ever gets the freaking abortion anyway, why do they keep bringing it up? I mean it’s not even legal everywhere, so it’s not like it would be ridiculous to not even mention it. I get the reason characters don’t have abortions is because it’s 1) a highly divisive topic and they don’t want to alienate viewers who disagree with abortions, and 2) there’s not much of a storyline if someone finds out they’re pregnant and then has an abortion.

That’s why I like on Degrassi, because abortions are I guess legal in Toronto, when the character decides to have the baby, it doesn’t feel so much like an empty gesture because they have the option to not go through with the pregnancy, whereas on American tv, the writers won’t let the characters have an abortion anyway. Basically it just makes me go “Why do you keep bringing it up if no one’s going to get one anyway?” [Side note: I'll cover Degrassi's various pregnancy episodes eventually, but I do like how, particularly in one storyline, the show abortion as DEFINITELY NOT AN EASY THING TO GO THROUGH WITH. The one character keeps freaking out about it, gets judged, gets into a fight, and then the girl who went with her to the appointment starts feeling guilty about helping the first girl go through with the abortion.]

This review is like half tangents.

Lordy.

This is apparently Sandy Ryerson’s doll collection, which he started in 1961. Sue is visiting Sandy, for purposes of Evil. Sue offers him the school’s Arts Administration position, which gives him control over art, drama, and yes, glee club. Wait, this school has a drama program?? Why does that never come up again? Oh my god, instead of keeping the show being Sue versus Glee club or Jocks versus Glee club for so long, they should’ve made it Drama Club versus Glee Club. Like the drama kids are all sick of glee getting all the attention, and some of them are super annoyed at how the glee club thinks you can just be all emotional just by singing, with no real acting involved, and some of the glee kids like the idea of being real actors in drama club and some of the drama kids like the idea of singing, so they try to get the clubs together to put on a musical or something but they all hate each other and the drama teacher starts filling Sue’s role in trying to destroy glee club. Crap, why didn’t they do that? That would’ve been better than what they gave us!

Well anyway, Sue has the power to give Sandy this position despite only being a cheerleading coach and despite the fact that Sandy isn’t allowed near children, because she’s blackmailing Figgins.

Sandy agrees that glee club needs to be taken down, and Sue’s plan is to steal Rachel away from glee club.

Returning director J.J. Abrams. Okay to be fair that’s not so much a lens flare as it is just catching the stage lights in a weird way, but still.

Schue is upset that Sandy is being allowed back in the school, but Figgins is like “come on!” and Schue is like “No, he stole my best singer!”

Rachel explains in flashback she just wanted to go somewhere where she’s appreciated, comparing it to when Schue formed Acafellas. Schue says the difference is, he didn’t do that out of spite. Rachel’s all “I wasn’t trying to spite you, I’m always such a team player blahblah”. I don’t know what Rachel’s been smoking, since she literally just complained about someone getting besides her getting a solo 12 minutes ago.

Rachel tries to get Schue to admit that he actually doesn’t like Rachel very much, but then Schue implies that sometimes he is the ONLY person who likes her. See, I wish I could feel sorry for Rachel, because that is really tough, realizing that nobody likes you, but she never does anything to try to change herself so that other people like her, they just end up liking her because the writers made them.

In present time, Sue says they’re just opening up a new channel for kids to feel good about themselves.

In… flashback again, Rachel tells Schue he’s doing a great job getting the other kids to come out of their shells, and everyone is getting some out of glee club, except her. She likes what he’s doing for Tina, but wonders why he has to hurt her to make Tina feel good. This would be a great Truth Bomb if only Rachel weren’t a selfish little snot. How exactly are you being hurt, Rachel? You didn’t get ONE solo in ONE song that the club is only going to sing ONCE? I get that she loves the song and the role and whatever, so she feels like the part belongs to her, but come on, Rachel.

Tina sings “Tonight” from West Side Story. That is indeed a solo song so why did everyone else get parts? Because there’s only Maria and I think Tony in the song. I think Schue mixed up the first Tonight and the “Tonight – Quintet” one where the entire cast sings.

Anyway Tina does terrible on the last note of the song, and loses confidence in herself. Schue encourages her, and points out that she stutters less when she’s confident. But Tina says Schue needs to just give the song to Rachel, because she’s better. Tina is willing to take one for the team.

See, Tina is willing to give up the solo to make Rachel feel better, whereas Rachel is willing to complain and quit because Schue wants Tina to feel better. Feh.

Finn reveals to Schue that he got Quinn pregnant. At first, Finn was bummed because he sees guys around town who had kids in high school and they’re all losers, but then he thought maybe he could go to college. But he can’t go without a football scholarship (except you’re poor so you oughtta be able to get some other funding, Finn), and he can’t get a scholarship if the team doesn’t start winning (is that true? That must totally suck for when one high school is undefeated, no one from any of the other schools can get scholarships I guess? I mean it makes sense that obviously if they win a lot, they’re more likely to have scouts pick them out over other players, but still).

Finn then asks Schue to coach the team in dancing, since it worked so well for Kurt. And the more games Schue helps them win, the more the team will respect him. Win/win, I guess?

Schue tells Terri about pregnant Quinn. Terri has an idea. Commercial break!

Puck thinks dancing is lame. Schue is like “No it’s not, lots of jocks are also performers!” He cites some examples I can’t remember, and Finn helpfully mentions O.J. Simpson. Haha, did you know Kris Jenner (mother of various Kardashians with whom one could keep up) has a music video from the 80s or 90s all about her friends, including O.J.? The video is terrible and hilarious, but also pretty cute. Yeah, she and former husband Kardashian were best friends with O.J. and his wife  Nicole – Kris being better friends with Nicole – and the whole murder thing put a big strain on everyone’s relationship with each other.

Also I have absolutely no idea how I remember her name was Nicole Brown.

On a different tangent, I always hate when guys are like “durr dancing and singing is gay!” Like haven’t they ever heard of all these famous dancers and singers who women just throw themselves at? Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney could’ve filled en entire country with their fangirls back in the day.

So anyway, Tanaka makes the guys go to the choir room to practice dancing.

Ah yeah, work it, Mike Chang!

Tanaka makes them cut practice short because of too much butt slapping (80% true).

Finn tells Puck that Quinn is pregnant, and no one questions why the school is still full of so many students even though the school day has presumably ended if football practice is going on. It’s kind of light out to be an early morning practice, if high school football teams even have early morning practices.

Puck finds Quinn… the same day? the next day? and asks if she’s sure who the father is, considering he’s best friends with Finn and Finn definitely would’ve told him if he’d had sex, and Quinn told Puck she was a virgin when they did it. WHOA HOLD UP. Quinn and PUCK had sex? Is PUCK the father? THAT’S why the whole hot tub pregnancy story didn’t make any sense earlier! Although knowing Glee, the writers might’ve just thought all that was true. It’s really hard with Glee sometimes to know what’s a character being stupid and what’s the writers being stupid, like Rachel’s earlier comment about Natalie Wood being Jewish. Maybe that was a red herring to make us think some of the facts in the show were wrong so we wouldn’t suspect Quinn’s story. Except I’m pretty sure Natalie Wood’s religious identity isn’t all that well-known, so… I’m stumped.

Quinn doesn’t want Puck to be the baby’s daddy, because he’s a loser. Puck says his dad was a deadbeat, but he’ll try his hardest to do right by Quinn. That’s actually… sweet? Wow. Meanwhile Rachel’s still being totally selfish, probably.

Quinn runs out into the rain, sobbing, hops in her car and OH MY GOD.

Jeez, Terri.

Quinn is understandably upset that a strange woman is in her car, talking about babies. Terri says she wants to help and gives Quinn some pre-natal vitamins, so her baby won’t be ugly [Terri's words, not mine]. Basically Terri wants to buy Quinn’s baby, even though Quinn is only 1 month along and Terri’s 4 months and I feel like Schue would notice his baby being like 3 months late. I don’t know if that’s strictly impossible for a baby to gestate for 12 months. Maybe Terri could lie and say she wasn’t as far along as she thought and was just gaining a lot of weight or something. Or like I said last time, fake a miscarriage.

Ummm football game! Puck says they’re “a big gay team of dancing gays.” One guy is nervous about actually doing the dance in front of all those people. Fat football player from opposing team calls Finn fat, or a hot dog, or something.

Game montage, the team’s doing terrible. Actually, both teams are.

I don’t know much about football, but I do know how to read a scoreboard because that’s how we in the marching band figured out how much time was left in the game so we could figure out when we needed to be ready for the halftime show, when to be back in the stands after our break was over, when the game was actually ending and we could go home (the one time I had heat stroke and got to leave early was the highlight of my time in the band). And I know this is an ATROCIOUS score. The other team only has 6 points?? Either both teams are godawful, or McKinley at least has an awesome defense. I mean if this were soccer or hockey that’d be a good score, right? But not football.

Finn calls a timeout, tries to convince Puck they need to bring Kurt in. Puck doesn’t want to be embarrassed, though. Then fat football player from opposing team insults Puck, saying his mom is so fat her cereal bowl comes with its own lifeguard. Puck’s fed up and says “yeah well I had sex with your mother.” This comes off as regular on-the-field banter, until you remember Puck is into older women and then he continues, “No seriously, I cleaned her pool, and we had sex on your bed. Nice Star Wars sheets.” That gets fat football player to shut up, and then Puck says he’s cool with doing the thing. So they all do the Single Ladies dance, or something, I guess.

Haha. Then they play football. Yeah. I guess they weren’t ready to bring Kurt in. Now the teams are tied even though there was only like 6 seconds left on the clock when Finn called the timeout and I think their play lasted longer than 6 seconds.

So NOW Kurt goes in to kick. Also the crowd at the football game seems to be entirely people who are 20+ years old, and there’s like 4 high school students there. That’s weird.

Kurt Single Ladies up the kick, McKinley wins!

HUZZAH

Celebration! And Puck is jealous that Quinn is kissing Finn, who is her boyfriend even though Puck is the father of her child.

Later, Burt tells Kurt he’s proud of him, and Kurt confesses he’s gay (not quite that abruptly, though). Burt reveals that he already knew Kurt was gay, ever since Kurt was 3 and only asked for a pair of sensible heels for his birthday. Burt, a man’s man, who earlier appeared to assume Kurt had a girlfriend or two, continues:

I guess I’m not totally in love with the idea, but… If that’s who you are, nothing I can do about it. And I love you just as much. Kay?

Ah, if only it were that easy for everyone else to come out to their parents. Oh Burt also asks if Kurt’s sure he’s gay, which is funny.

Finn gives Quinn his baby blanket, that his dad bought him the day he was born (the dad who, remember, died at the latest in 1991, making Finn at least 18). Quinn is touched. Puck shows up and makes a sly remark about how he’s been feeling sick lately, must be a virus going around. Quinn agrees, although we haven’t seen any evidence of her being sick at all, unless that vomit that was on the floor and wasn’t Rachel’s in an earlier episode was in fact Quinn’s.

Mike Chang = Asian, Matt Rutherford = silent black man.

Puck, Mike Chang, and Matt Rutherford are joining Glee club because they had an awesome time with Kurt teaching them how to dance or whatever. The club officially has 12 members now, and can qualify for competition. Hooray! Don’t get too attached to Matt, he has two lines before they boot him off the show and then never mention him again (“all the original cast will be there!” my foot).

Schue has the club sing “Tonight” from West Side Story, giving the solo to Tina again, disappointing Rachel who is totally a team player okay. Then Rachel quits glee club to star in the school’s production of Cabaret because she’s such a team player.

Oh I almost forgot to do best song/worst song. Ummm well there were only two songs performed by the cast in this episode, “Tonight” sung by Tina and “Taking Chances” sung by Rachel. Tonight wasn’t really long enough or orchestrated enough to fully judge, and I hated Taking Chances. So… Single Ladies wins!

On a related note, I think Glee actually counted at least one of the Single Ladies performances in their list of the first 300 songs done on the show, even though nobody actually sang Single Ladies on the show besides Beyonce. That doesn’t count, man. Maybe I oughtta keep count myself…

Now it’s time for Who did it better?

Degrassi also has many pregnancy storylines and coming-out stories (including one involving a football player who’s worried about the consequences of coming out as a jock). Boy Meets World has like one and a half pregnancy storylines and no coming-out stories. All the stories are so different from each other, though, and I think they’re all handled well enough that I wouldn’t feel comfortable saying any show did it better. So how’s this for a pointless paragraph, eh?

“The Best Laid Plans”, Mar 1 1987

I’m going to start off by pointing out the year. The Degrassi franchise has the most confused timeline of any show that doesn’t do a bunch time skips yet still manages to take place in present day. The first episode premiered in January yet was about the beginning of the school year, which meant it took place in September despite airing in January. So that’s the question – did the first episode take place in September 1987, meaning it took place after it aired, or 1986, which would’ve been the September before it aired? Season 2 is the second half of the school year, so does that mean it takes place January-June 1988 (which is when it aired), or does it take place at the same time the first season was airing? Looking to the timeline in Degrassi: TNG doesn’t help, because the timeline on THAT show doesn’t make any sense ever since they started drawing out one school year into multiple seasons. Emma was supposed to be born in 1988, but a character that’s a year older than her was also born in 1988, and a character that’s the same age as her was born in 1990. I think Degrassi: TNG is technically supposed to be taking place in like 2010 or 2011 right now.

It’s confusing, is what I’m saying.

Anyway both these episodes are kind of lame.

Joey wants to play doctor with Stephanie. Literally, he said he has a great bedside manner. Steph says no, and asks Wheels if he’d like to go to a movie on Friday to make up for their awful first date. Wheels consents to the date.

Voula wears that shirt an awful lot.

Steph finds Voula in the bathroom and tells her how she asked out Wheels. Voula does her usual “Lucky me! The school president is sharing her love life with me!” Stephanie asks her how long she’s planning on dragging out this bitterness, because she’s already apologized a thousand times for not thanking her for writing her speech and not giving the speech at the dance. I get that Voula’s just mad and betrayed and doesn’t feel like forgiving Stephanie, but she seriously needs to start dialing down the shrew inside, it’s getting real old.

Steph is planning to wear something super sexy on the date, but one of the twins asks how she’s planning on doing that because her mom doesn’t know she dresses that way at school. Uh oh!

Yick found a pornography VHS in his brother’s room. His brother isn’t going to be home this weekend, so he wants to watch it with Arthur.

So, can any of you help me out here? Is that a real thing that guys do, watch porn with their friends? I think that would be super awkward to watch porn videos with people you weren’t hoping to sleep with. I mean, what do you do? You just sit there with your buddies and try to ignore everyone else’s erections? Then what? I mean, if you all get erections, do you make a deal as to who gets to masturbate in the bathroom first? Or do you just chill and do it in front of each other? Or with each other?

I totally get watching some hot video at home and telling your bros about it at school the next day, but why would want to watch it with your heterosexual friends whom you are not sexually attracted to?

Stephanie’s mom works at a pharmacy. And it turns out she’s got a date on Friday! Whoa that’s when Steph’s date is! How lucky!

Steph asks if the guy is cute, and her mom is hilarious because she’s like “Well… In his own way.” So he’s ugly but adorable, I guess.

What a weird selection of books in the school library.

The twins asks Steph what she’d do if Wheels tried something. Stephanie says she’d let him. All the Way with Stephanie Kaye indeed!

Tall guy and not-Yick overhear this and find Joey and Wheels in the bathroom and tell them that Steph’s planning to do things with Wheels on their date. Then they all yell “All the Way with Stephanie Kaye.” I forgot they actually say that in the episode.

Also Arthur overhears this, and disapproves.

The rumor spreads like wildfire, and one of the twins advises Stephanie to cancel the date until the rumors die down. But other twin says she’d be crazy to cancel the date. Stephanie plays it cool and says she doesn’t mind, and that sex is no big deal. I like Stephanie in this episode – it’s kind of subtle that she’s actually really not ready, but she keeps playing herself up like she’s this cool, experienced chick.

Also Voula shows up and says something horrible, and one of the twins is just like ‘Nice, Voula” and rolls her eyes. Voula appears to have actually regretted saying something mean for once after that.

Kathleen (the blonde girl, remember) thinks it’s disgusting that their own class president is thinking about having sex. Melanie, sporting an awesome sheep sweater that I think Rachel Berry of Glee wishes she had, thinks that sex is no big deal. Kathleen’s all “Well I’m saving myself for my husband” and Melanie makes fun of her and says “What husband? Who’d be stupid enough to marry you?” Kathleen and Voula are both shrews, but Kathleen is more along the lines of the obnoxious judgmental know-it-all while Voula’s just mean. Kathleen’s that girl who whenever she says anything you just roll your eyes and get back to work. Voula’s the girl who says things and you just kind of gape at her in disbelief that she said what she did. Also Voula has like no characterization besides having a strict father and being mean to Stephanie. Snake didn’t even talk until two episodes ago and we got a better sense of his character than we do of Voula’s.

Wheels asks his dad how old he was when he lost his virginity, while walking a tiny dog. Wheels’s dad says he was a lot older than Wheels is now.

Wheels’s dad says that sex isn’t something you do just for fun. It’s complicated and comes with responsibilities. Wheels is only 14 and still has lots of things to do before sex. Well said, Wheels’s dad.

Stephanie, sporting the second awesome animal sweater of the episode, asks her mom about the first time she had sex. Steph’s mom says they should talk. But Steph is all “I already know about the birds and the bees, I’m not a child.”

At school the next(?) day, Joey starts loudly telling Wheels he needs to buy some condoms. He’s not wrong.

Voula overhears this and finds Stephanie in the bathroom. Surprisingly, she isn’t a total jerk and asks Stephanie if she’s really planning on having sex with Wheel. Steph’s like “Oh yeah, for sure.” Voula clearly thinks this is a bad idea, but instead of going on, she just apologizes for calling Stephanie a sleaze earlier. Who knew all it took to start repairing their relationship was the prospect of sex?

After school, Wheels goes to buy some condoms. Uh-oh he’s at the pharmacy Stephanie’s mom works at! I hope that doesn’t create any awkwardness later on.

You know, they really oughtta teach more about condoms in sex ed classes. Pretty much all they taught my class was that small condoms will fit even the largest of penises so don’t ever let a guy tell you he’s too big for a condom, or let him buy a jumbo-sized one because if it’s too big it’ll slip off. But there’s so many other things about condoms, like it’s a good idea to wear one even if you’re receiving oral sex, especially if you’re worried about the spread of diseases or if the giver doesn’t like having semen in his/her mouth. Or that if a man complains that he hates condoms because they’re too tight and restrictive, he probably has a latex allergy and should switch to non-latex condoms instead of just foregoing them altogether.

Well anyway Wheels buys a really small pack of condoms and this old lady gives him a judgmental look. Also Stephanie’s mom gives him some pamphlets on STDs before he leaves.

Later, Yick asks if he can invite more people over to watch Swamp Sex Robots. Arthur’s cool with that. Nothing like a porn-viewing party to liven up the evening.

Ms. Kaye asks what Arthur and Steph have planned for the evening. Steph’s just like “Umm I’m gonna see a movie… with friends” and Arthur says he’s just going to watch tv. Mrs. Kaye catches on to how weird they’re acting, but doesn’t say anything about it. But she does say there was a boy about their age that came in looking for condoms so here’s some pamphlets on teen sex.

Wheels leaves for his date and awwww he’s buying flowers! That’s sweet.

Steph and Arthur are both displeased that Ms. Kaye’s date is late. They can’t get their plans going until he shows up. Wheel and Ms. Kaye’s date show up at the same time, with the exact same bouquet of flowers. Arthur gets the door and tries to get Wheel to come back in a few minutes. Wheels is confused as to why Arthur is there since he doesn’t know he’s Steph’s brother, but no one explains because Ms. Kaye comes to the door right then.

She recognizes Wheels as the kid from the drugstore before, and puts two and two together and angrily calls for Stephanie. She comes down in her robe, but the robe flaps up and Ms. Kaye can see what she’s wearing.

She postpones her date and makes Steph and Wheel sit down to talk to them about sex or something. Then there’s a knock at the door, and Arthur answers it, and it’s Yick and some other guys, who all want to see the porno.

The next day,Wheels tells Joey what happened, and says he thinks he’ll only be friends with Steph for now. Joey thinks this is rad, because it means she’s available! Haha, Joey, you’re a loser.

Meanwhile, Stephanie is walking to school with Voula. She says that her mom gave her this really mad lecture about not lying to her and stuff, and she’s super grounded. So grounded in fact that she’s not even allowed over at Voula’s place. Man when you can’t even go to the house of your friend whose dad makes her dress like a Mennonite, you KNOW you’re in trouble. [No offense against Mennonites, by the way]

Then Voula asks if Stephanie was actually intending to have sex with Wheels after all. Steph doesn’t answer, just tilts her head slightly. I can’t really read what that response is supposed to mean. Maybe that she doesn’t know if she actually would’ve gone all the way?

Season 1 of Degrassi: TNG also has an episode dealing with 8th graders deciding if they should have sex, and two 7th grade boys trying to watch porn. The first storyline ends with them deciding they aren’t ready and then blowing up the condoms like balloons. The second one involves the boys getting caught by the one guy’s dad. And then it gets really weird because the dad makes them sit there and look at the porn with him which seems illegal and I think would more likely create a complex than it would teach the boys about not objectifying women. Also the dad makes them look at gay porn too, which is even more confusing. I’m not really sure what the point of making them look at guys having sex in addition to looking at naked women was supposed to teach. I think it would make more sense if the lesson there was about how sometimes you can be turned on by things you don’t necessarily believe in – like some people are turned on by things in pornography that they aren’t necessarily attracted to outside of pornography, like gay sex or bondage. Outside of your fantasies or the bedroom, you wouldn’t want to be tied up, bound and gagged, but thinking about it in the context of having sex with a consenting partner can be arousing for some people.

Man this one post is going to make this blog impossible to access from schools and some offices. How many times did I say “porn” in this post?

It’s too bad, we never got to find out what exactly “Swamp Sex Robots” were or what they did.

“Nothing to Fear”, March 8 1987

LD prepares to leave for school, eating marshmallows and toast. Her dad tells her to remember ot clean the kitchen right after school, but LD protests, saying he told her she could help work on Mr. Jeremiah’s transmission that afternoon. That’s not a weird innuendo, LD’s dad is a car mechanic.

LD’s dad (boy would it be great if any of these people had names) gets all mad at her for not being a little lady and fooling around with cars and stuff and wearing a hat. THE NERVE. She just rolls her eyes and rides off on her bike muttering “drop dead.” Coincidentally, right at that moment, her dad collapses and tells the other guy in the garage to call 911. Or maybe it wasn’t a coincidence and LD is a witch.

For Ms. Avery’s class, the kids are supposed to make maps of an assigned area of the neighborhood. LD’s in a group with Voula and a girl who’s always just be in the background and never said anything yet. Part of their assigned area includes the hospital, and LD mentions she hates hospitals. Too bad her dad is in one! Also doesn’t everybody hate hospitals?

The girls agree to wait for her at the school at 4:30 so LD can have time to clean the kitchen. THRILLING. LD complains about her dad being so strict since her brothers moved. Why is it everyone on this show has a brother we’ve never seen? Caitlin has a brother who’s moved out, Joey has three or four siblings we never see. Yick has a brother. LD has brothers. Rick has a brother we actually do see once or twice. What’s up with that? Nobody has sisters.

The class snake escaped. Melanie is freaking out because she hates snakes and is afraid the snake will crawl up her leg.

So later that day, LD comes home and finds out her dad is in the hospital. She has to pack some things for him, and has a flashback to when her mom went to the hospital because she was very sick. So LD hates hospitals because her mom died in one, I guess.

Meanwhile Spike and Voula are waiting for LD on the steps. Spike figures LD’s not gonna show. They did a science project the previous year and Spike ended up doing all the work herself. When Voula points out that LD had the flu during that project, Spike says LD’s always got excuses.

Eventually they call LD’s house and find out what’s up. She claims she forgot about it, and Spike says “See? She’s always got an excuse.” Then LD ells the assistant mechanic that she has too much work to do to visit her father that day.

Spike and Voula ask if LD is planning on actually helping them finish the project that afternoon. LD says she’s busy, and Spike snaps and is all “Why don’t you actually do some work for a change?!” For tone context she sounds a bit like Gretchen in Mean Girls when she says “You can’t sit with us!” I like that we’ve only heard Spike talk for 5 minutes and she’s already snapped. That’s awesome.

Anyway LD says her dad is in the hospital, and Spike apologizes and says they’ll cover for her on the project.

Later LD works up the nerve to visit the hospital with a little bouquet of flowers. She freaks out, though, and just asks the receptionist nurse to give hrer dad the flowers so she can leave. Then she calls her dad from a payphone. Ah. Payphones.

Her dad says he’s fine but will be in the hospital for a little while longer. Also his hospital room has a huge number of family photos in it. LD says she didn’t visit him because of her class project. LD’s dad understands and tells her to make sure the kitchen is clean by the time he comes back. They end the call and LD’s dad is clearly saddened by his daughter not visiting.

The next day, Arthur, Yick, and Suzie hunt down the snake and leave a little snake home for him in the boiler room. Yick doesn’t understand why a cold-blooded creature would care about a hot room. Arthur’s like “Please, I actually did research.” Arthur is correct – because snakes are cold-blooded, they seek out warm areas. Usually when a snake goes missing from its enclosure at a zoo they find the snake sleeping on a radiator or something in the building or in another building.

Melanie’s at her locker, minding her own business. The principal on the PA system assures students there is only the one snake on the loose, and rumors about 12 tarantulas also being missing are completely false. Yep, sounds like middle school.

Some loser kids, including the one who pulled on Melanie’s bra a couple episodes ago, dangle a toy snake over her locker door.

When she finally notices, she jumps and yells “SNAKE!”

Snake the person responds, “Yeah?” That is the funniest joke in this whole show, I think. I mean it’s funny enough just on its own, but it gets better when you think about how she shouted it so panicked and frightened and Snake doesn’t seem to be too concerned. His reaction is just like “Did someone call me?” Haha, Snake is awesome. I’m glad he’s the one staple of the Degrassi franchise from the past 27 years.

Voula and Spike have started a little collection of money for LD. The other kids wonder if LD’s dad is really that sick. They don’t know, but LD’s pretty upset, so they’re just trying to help out in what little way they can. Also Stephanie mentions she hates hospitals. I’m sure she doesn’t have some tragic backstory about her mom going to the hospital because she had leukemia or something and then dying. I mean obviously she doesn’t, we just saw her mom in the last episode, but you know what I mean.

Voula and Spike visit LD’s dad – Mr. Delacorte, finally he has a name! They say they wanted to bring the flowers while LD wasn’t there so it’d be a nice surprise for her next time she showed up. Mr. Delacorte says LD hasn’t visited him yet, because she’s got some important mapping project for school that’s kept her busy. Being LD’s partners and knowing she’s been skipping work because she says she has to visit her dad, Voula and Spike wonder what the heck is going on.

LD is sad. She explains to Voula that her mom got sick and went to hospital, and even though everyone said she’d be fine, she died. Voula tries to reassure her that just because someone’s in the hospital, it doesn’t mean they’re going to die. Her mom had an operation two months ago and is fine. Voula has a mom?? News to me.

This doesn’t really change LD’s mind, and she talks about how her dad doesn’t like her anyway because she’s not a girl-girl or whatever.

Also there’s an announcement on the PA about the lunch menu being change to “Corn on the Cobra” is just a prank and not to be taken seriously.

The snake, Amadeus, turned out to have been in someone’s dufflebag (I think Melanie’s?) Melanie realizes the snake isn’t slimy at all, and is actually sort of cute. Arthur picks up Amadeus and wears him, and that jerk kid comes in. He goes into a barely contained panic when he realizes the snake isn’t rubber and runs away. Melanie observes, “Some people are scared by the silliest things.” What a lot of character development in a short amount of time!

LD finally gets up the nerve to actually  visit her dad in the hospital. As she wanders the halls, trying to find his room, a bodiless dialogue apparently between younger LD and her dad plays. It’s nothing special, and the acting by young LD is terrible. It’s just her asking repeatedly “When’s mummy coming home?” and him being like “She’ll be in the hospital a bit longer” and then finally “…Mummy’s not coming home.”

LD finally finds her dad’s room, and… Well, I’m afraid LD’s dad is no longer with us.

If you figured that was an Arrested Development reference, good for you, because it was. No one dies in this season of the show.

Yeah, her dad’s fine. He just had an angina, which is essentially chest pains caused by plaque buildup in the arteries. He just needs to take better care of himself, is all.

As they walk down the hallway, Mr. Delacorte says “Hey, you think hospitals are scary? Try being the parent of a teenaged daughter.” Man no kidding. I mean I was never the parent of a teenager, but I was a teenager, and have an older sister who was also a teenager, and let me tell you…

Degrassi:TNG has a couple episodes a little similar to this. One character ends up in the hospital and another really doesn’t want to visit her. But it doesn’t seem to have to do with anything in particular, maybe she just hates hospitals. There’s another episode where a character isn’t doing any work on a group project, but the other members of the group think it’s because she knows they’ve been secretly dating and she’s upset because the guy is her ex-boyfriend, but it turns out she didn’t even notice but was upset because her mom has cancer.

Bonus: Degrassi Talks… Sexuality

I totally forgot the DJH DVDs contain episodes of the short series “Degrassi Talks.” They made this show after Degrassi High ended. It involves a handful of the cast traveling across Canada and talking to people about various issues while referencing how the tv show handled the same issues. It’s a pretty neat show, because it features real people giving their real opinions on stuff, and even features the actors talking about some of their own experiences. Also it’s got the cheesiest theme song known to man.

I won’t recap the whole thing, but here’s some highlights of the sexuality episode:

• “Zits aren’t fun, but pubic hair is great!”
• The actor who plays Joey Jeremiah asked his doctor if there was something he could take to make himself grow taller because he was like 4’8 in 8th grade while everyone else was like a foot taller. Also in 8th grade the tallest girl in the grade asked him to dance, so he had to dance with his head on her bosom. All the other guys were apparently very jealous.
• “Got an erection during gym… During a shower… You know, with other guys.” Aw man, awkward. Poor kid.
• Some girl got her first period in gym while they were doing cartwheels, and didn’t notice until someone pointed it out to her.
• Another girl told her mom she got her period, and her mom ran out and told her father and brothers about it.
• On masturbation: “I think it could, uh, hurt your chances of having a child later on.” [This is wrong.]
• One guy went to school with kids who assumed that really nerdy-looking guys must masturbate all the time.
• When they’re interviewing one girl about when she started liking guys, there’s someone playing bagpipes in the background.
• The actor who plays Snake waits for the woman to make the first move because he “doesn’t like to push things like that.”
• They talk to a handful of people who say homosexuality is morally wrong. One guy says gays should just “go somewhere else”, and another drops the classic “They should just be put on an island somewhere.” Hitler would approve.
• In contrast, they talk to a bunch of people who think it’s a shame how badly gay people are treated. One girl says she thinks it’s dumb that the sex ed classes basically don’t mention homosexuality at all.
• The actress who plays Caitlin has a sister who is gay. She says when she watched the episode where Caitlin has those dreams about Ms. Avery and wonders if it means she’s gay, the whole plotline hit really close to home because she was also having dreams about her teacher and questioning her sexuality.
• Caitlin’s actress’s sister (Kim) reveals that the phrase “That’s so gay” that people use to refer to things that suck or are lame was apparently around in the late 1980s. Man, there’s a lot of stuff from Degrassi I wish was still cool these days, but this is not one of them.
• Kim was in charge of her college’s Gay/Lesbian/etc alliance and put up posters for a meeting, and the posters were defaced with things like “Bring bats, clubs, and other instruments of mutilation” and “Hooray for AIDs.”
• Kim also says that even though she sometimes worries for her safety as an out lesbian, she’d rather spend a short life helping people out, then a long life hiding.

Kim Mistysyn appears to still be alive, so that’s comforting. According to this article, if this is indeed the same person (it probably is, I mean what are the odds of there being two women named Kim Mistysyn who are both lesbians?), she shares weekday custody of her son with her partner, and the son spends weekends with his biological father who is also gay. Boy is that a solution to people who are like “But a gay couple can’t raise a baby because you need both a male AND female presence in your life!” Just have a pair of homosexual women and a paid of homosexual men raise the baby! Problem solved! Haha.

Oh I guess that article is 12 years old so it might not be accurate anymore, but it’s still interesting.

Bonus 2: Here are links about the books that were in the library shot before.

Sweet Savage Love by Rosemary Rogers. “Ginny Brandon is swept from the ballrooms of Paris to the desert sands of Mexico and into the arms of charismatic mercenary Steve Morgan. But this fearless heroine and “hero of all heroes” must first endure countless unforeseen dangers before they can enjoy sensual, exhilarating passion that burns between them.”

Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence.

I can’t make out the title on the next book.

Secret at Jester Moor by Roberta Roleine.  [This is also a steamy romance novel. Also abebooks.com totally screwed up their entry for this book, describing instead a book where a man set to be the country's next prime minister is torn between wanting to do right by the princess he knocked up, and his ambition to be prime minister.]

Flying Saucers – Serious Business by Frank Edwards.

Paper Moon by Joe David Brown [Hey I've seen the movie based on this book! It stars Ryan and Tatum O'Neal!]

I can’t make out the title on the last book.

What a weird assortment, though, for real. Why are there two steamy romance novels in a middle school library?

“What a Night”, March 15, 1987

Lucy is a shoplifter.

Man Lucy hasn’t been in an episode in forever. Like not even in the background.

Raditch is giving another spelling lesson. I don’t know what the theme is, because he mentions balcony, nocturnal, tangerine, and quiche. What do those words have in common? They’re in the class’ weekly reading assignment I guess. The words “thief, deciduous, funeral, pledge, and breathe” are also on the board. Thief and deciduous seem like an awful jump in difficulty.

Raditch wants to talk to Lucy after class. Lucy tells Voula that Raditch is a fascist. I love it when teenagers call adults fascists like that. Haha.

Anyway he tells her she’s been slacking off and needs to work harder.

Meanwhile in study period, Stephanie, Heather,Erika, and a lot of the other kids are watching a soap opera because their study hall supervisor isn’t there.

Steph says she’s going to meet the soap opera star guy later at some autograph signing. Then the lookout says that their teacher is coming so they quickly turn the tv off. The most awesome part of this scene is when the teacher comes in and says “I didn’t hear the tv on, did I?” everyone in the class looks at her all puzzled and says “No.” That’s always one of the best things about being in school. Even if you’ve got the kids who are really annoyed by the shenanigans and don’t participate because they don’t want to get in trouble, you never snitch on your classmates because you don’t want to be a ratfink. Heh.

Um also Voula offers to tutor Lucy for the spelling test.

Lucy’s mom calls, saying she’ll still be longer at the office. Lucy tells her that her dad is also going to be late. Then Lucy decides to take a break and also lets Voula try on her clothes.

Steph and the twins have a fun little fantasy about the soap opera guy saying that he knew they were meant for each other from the moment they met, and the age difference doesn’t matter since they’re really in love. Teenage girls have the best fantasy life. That’s why an overwhelming majority of fanfiction writers are female.

Check out what Voula’s wearing now:

Voula asks Lucy about her parents. It turns out her parents are rarely home, but Lucy says she’s self-sufficient and totally not lonely or acting out because of this or anything.

Lucy tells Voula she can stay for supper if she wants. Voula has to go home, though. Lucy lets her take the scarf she stole earlier, saying she’s got lots of others, and it’s pretty tame so Voula’s parents shouldn’t mind.

Then Lucy’s mom calls and says she’ll actually be back even later than she said earlier. Lucy’s sad. When TNG did a similar story, it followed it up with the Lucy equivalent calling the pizza place and being like “Yeah, it’s Jimmy again. The usual,” so it made it like even sadder.

Raditch reads out words for the spelling test. Words including are receive, paralysis, corroborate, and hierarchy. What a weird assortment. With thief, receive, and hierarchy they could’ve had an “ie/ei” theme, but then there’s funeral, quiche, and corroborate to consider.

Steph and the twins head to the book signing. Steph’s like “Oh I didn’t buy a book because I forgot my money at home” and asks if he’ll sign a newspaper article about himself. He asks how old she is and she says she’s 16. The soap opera guy’s like “Sweet 16″ and kisses her on the cheek, saying he kisses all his fans. What a creeper. Also he wrote his phone number down when he signed the paper. Was the age of consent in Canada in 1987 age 16? Either way that guy’s gotta be at least 10 years older than her.

Umm Lucy did well on her test, and wants to thank Voula by taking her shopping. Voula doesn’t know if she should, because her dad’s all scary and stuff, but Lucy won’t take no for an answer. Also when Raditch is passing back the tests, when he gives Joey his he says “I didn’t realize you knew Swahili.” I mention this for no reason other than to say this actually is a bit of foreshadowing/character development for a later episode.

Steph arranges a date with soap opera guy. The twins are like “Okay it was cool to fantasize about it, but if your mom finds out you’re dating an older guy she’ll kill you.” They have a point.

At the mall, Lucy shoves some jewelry in her bag. Voula’s not that into shopping, but finds a hideous sweater that she likes. It’s too expensive, though, but Lucy just asks what size she is and then she stuffs the sweater into her bag. [Voula is a "petite", by the way, despite that not being an actual size. I mean, maybe it was in Canada in the 80s, but these days you typically have the regular clothing sizes with Petite in front of them - Petite Small, Petite Large, etc. Ah, and this is something a lot of people get wrong - petite doesn't mean "small", it actually means "short". I usually have to get petite pants in stores like Macy's. The different between petites and regulars is basically the proportion is different. I mean women's clothing has a huge problem where the designers basically just enlarge the clothes for larger sizes instead of making them proportionally larger, so you end up with monstrously huge arm holes in the larger sizes. Typically when women need to buy the larger sizes, though, it's not because their arms have suddenly widened to a 30 inch circumference, so that tends to be a problem. ]

Anyway Voula doesn’t want to steal, but Lucy thinks it’s no big deal (unintentional rhyme!) Some lady overhears them and pulls out this awesome walkie-talkie

Look how long the antenna on that thing is!

Voula keeps freaking out as they make for the exit, and Lucy says if she’s that worried she can just put the sweater back. Voula can’t do that, though, because what if someone sees?! What’s the issue there? If you’re putting it back, then they can’t bust you for shoplifting since you never left with the thing.

Then the girls see a security guy at the top of the escalator.

They turn to go down the escalator to escape, but nope.

They’re caught.

The security lady gives the girls a lecture about how stealing is wrong and drives the prices in the store up. Which it does. So, yeah. The security lady also says the police are coming. Voula’s worried, but Lucy says as long as they admit they did it and won’t do it again, the police will just let them go. Voula’s like “How do you know? Have you done this before??” A police officer shows up just then and says “Well, well. You again.” Lucy’s got a record! Uh-oh!

Meanwhile, soap opera guy picks up Stephanie and says “Let’s you and me have some fun.” CREEPER.

Soap opera guy drives to a motel parking lot and rubs her knee and Stephanie starts panicking and says she wants to go home. She runs out of the car and the soap opera guy follows her. He tells her to be quiet, and she’s like “I’m not really 16! I’m 14!” The guy starts backing away and she continues with “And I told all my friends I was going out with you!” The guy drives away, leaving her in the parking lot. Man, he’s lucky Steph doesn’t take this to the press. As if the rest of the story wasn’t so bad, he didn’t even call a cab for her or anything?

She calls her mom from the motel lobby’s phone and asks her to pick her up.

Meanwhile Voula and Lucy actually get taken to the police station. Voula’s mad wishes she’d never helped Lucy. Lucy better watch out, Voula can hold a grudge like no one’s business. The police officer comes over and says they’re having trouble getting in contact with Lucy’s parents, and they’re going to have to charge Lucy this time instead of just letting her off. Ouch.

The next day, Steph and the twins discuss what a creep the soap opera guy was. Indeed he was, but maybe Stephanie now realizes that lying about your age and arranging dates with creepy older guys you don’t actually know is not the best idea.

What a hideous vest. I hope Lucy stole that and didn’t pay for it.

ANYWAY Voula’s not allowed to talk to Lucy anymore. Lucy still talks to Voula, though, and says she has to go to court over the shoplifting thing. Her mother also called her a brat who was ungrateful for everything she’s been given. Also she and her parents are supposed to have family counseling, but Lucy reckons her parents are never going to be able to find the time to go.

Voula offers to help Lucy study for spelling or math or whatever. Lucy’s confused, because Voula’s not supposed to talk to Lucy anymore. Voula thinks her parents will understand, once they stop being so mad, and again asks Lucy if she wants help. Lucy smiles.

I don’t know what we were supposed to learn from this episode.

“Smokescreen”, March 22, 1987

“Smokescreen” sounds like a terrible 80s movie about a spy who has sex with werewolves or something.

No one will sign the petition to save the environment. Except Rick. Suzie thinks maybe Rick likes Caitlin. Kathleen thinks that’s gross because Rick is the school criminal. Caitlin suggests all he needs is friends or something. I didn’t realize this until a few months ago, but Kathleen and Catilin are actually the same name. Caitlin’s an Irish spelling, Kathleen is an anglicized version. I don’t really have a point here, it’s just funny.

Ms. Avery’s 7th grade class is doing presentations on their family history. We see the end of Suzie’s, where she talks about her police officer dad who was a part of NASA or something and gave her a cool badge and freed Tibet and saved the whales and ended world hunger.

Yick’s supposed to do his presentation the next week. He doesn’t want to do his presentation, because everyone else’s family is exciting and he figures no one wants to hear about him being poor and living in a small house full of relatives. Yick raises a good point. I hate these kinds of things, because there’s always a large number of students whose families were all spectacular and like punched Hitler in the face and their great-aunt is the ruler of Morocco or something, and while that’s interesting, you have the other kids who can’t trace their family history, or it’s like “Well my family came here on a non-famous ship in the 1700s and we’ve been poor farmers ever since.” Makes you feel kind of inadequate.

Rick shows up to the Environmental Action Committee meeting. Kathleen’s all “What do you know about the environment?” Rick replies, “I live in it.” Caitlin decrees that since Rick signed their petition earlier, it proves he cares about the environment, and thus is allowed to join the club.

The first topic for the meeting is choosing a new name for the club.

After the meeting lets out, some of the kids say they disagree with letting Rick join the club. Kathleen says he’s no good and she heard even his own father disowned him. Suzie, or possibly Caitlin, ask where Kathleen always gets these crazy stories. Kathleen ignores this and points out that they do know Rick flunked his previous year of school, and also she heard that the reason he was always covered in bruises was because he got into fights all the time. Caitlin’s had enough and tells her just because he’s poor and disadvantaged doesn’t mean he’s a criminal. Melanie is the only person who remotely likes Kathleen, I think.

Meanwhile, Yick bought a vase from a thrift store for $4.99. He shows it to Arthur the next day. Yick claims the vase is a family heirloom, which is isn’t. Arthur wonders which dynasty this clearly antique vase is from, and Yick says it’s from the Ming Dynasty, or maybe the Manchu. Maybe even both! Haha, that doesn’t make sense. Arthur offers to have the vase appraised because he dad knows a guy, and Yick’s all “No, that’s okay.”

Later, Arthur accidentally breaks the vase.

Rick and Caitlin meet up so Rick can help Caitlin work on her announcement about their campaign  for the next day, and discuss air pollution on their way to Caitlin’s house. Rick thinks Caitlin’s rich, but Caitlin doesn’t think so. Both her parents are teachers, actually her mom is a vice-principal. Rick thinks this is bizarre and unbelievable. Also Rick decides they should do a rap over the PA system.

It works. Apparently terrible Canadian rap is the way to the people’s hearts. Also the Canadian pronunciation of “about” ["aboat"] is hilarious in rap form.

The environmental club meets up again that day. First order of business: their name. Caitlin’s like “What? Let’s discuss the petition, not the stupid name!” Kathleen thinks the petition thing is stupid. Who’s gonna listen to a bunch of kids with a petition? I mean she has a point. There’s not that many kids in the school and the only signatures they have are from those few kids. Like the company CEO is going to care about a bunch of environmentally-minded 13 year olds with a piece of paper?

Well anyway they think Kathleen is stupid, and Rick encourages Caitlin and Suzie to come with him to drop off the petition at the big air polluter business.

They sit down with some nerdy representative of the company. Caitlin just says “Um we’re from Degrassi Junior High and we’d like you to stop polluting the air.” Yeah. That’s what she says. Just stop polluting. Like it’s that easy.

The representative says they test all their emissions and find they aren’t toxic or anything. Suzie points out that the newspaper said otherwise. The representative guy doesn’t care, though. Rick starts getting mad and the representative tells the kids to leave, and he’ll totally be sure to give their petition to the company president.

So they leave. Rick hangs out in front of a store and smokes. Kathleen sees, and disapproves.

At the club’s meeting later that same day (this is the second meeting they’ve had that day, or else Caitlin wore the same outfit two days in a row), their first order of business is deciding on a new name. They never get anything done, just tweak around with pointless thing no one cares about, just like many business and organizations in real life.

Kathleen actually would rather discuss Rick, explaining that she doesn’t think anyone who smokes, thereby polluting the air and his own lungs, should be allowed in the environmental club.

Rick calls them an Inaction Committee and leaves. Then Kathleen lords it over Caitlin, all “See? I told you he was no good.” Then they go back to discussing the club’s name.

Rick waits for Caitlin. Caitlin’s mad at Rick, though, saying he made her look foolish, after she went through all the effort of helping him. I don’t know if I missed something or I’m misremembering, but I don’t recall Caitlin helping Rick at all in this episode? He actually helped her out more than once.

Arthur reveals that he broke Yick’s vase and didn’t want to tell him because he knew Yick would be mad. Since it wasn’t really an antique heirloom, Yick doesn’t care that much, but now he doesn’t have a prop for his fabricated story. Arthur manages to convince him to tell his real story to the class, and Yick does.

Yick’s story is about how he and his entire family escaped the Old Country on a boat. They spent days and days at sea. It was scary, because sometimes they’d see another ship and have to hide in case it was a pirate ship. Eventually the boat made it to land, and he and some of his family were lucky because they survived the journey. All they made it out of the country with were the clothes on their backs, and that’s why he doesn’t have anything cool to show the class about his family.

After the story, everyone in the class flocks over to him to tell him how cool that story was to ask more questions.

Caitlin’s still sad about Rick. Kathleen says he was a loser anyway, but has good news because she came up with a new name. It’s a super long, terrible name, and Caitlin responds just by calling Kathleen a jerk and then walking away.

Caitlin finds Rick outside and thanks him for helping her. She complains about how the company totally ignored their petition and wishes there was something she could do about it.

Rick has a plan, though. He suggests they call up the paper and tell them how a bunch of junior high kids tried standing up to a big pollution-spewing company and were totally ignored. Caitlin kisses him on the cheek and tells him he’s brilliant. Rick puts his finger to his lips and says “Sssh, don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation.”

Ha.

They never do say where Yick is from, although the vase thing suggests he’s Chinese. But since it’s not really an heirloom vase and Yick’s actor is Laotian, I remember I decided Yick probably was Laotian as well, a few reviews ago. Laos appears to be a country that’s had a lot of problems over the years, so it certainly is conceivable that Yick’s family fled Laos to seek a better life in Toronto, Canada.

Next episode is where things FINALLY start getting really good.

Aw man so apparently this is my 100th post. Wow.

I wish I had something planned. Like maybe for my 200th post I’ll try keeping a record of my favorite lines, episodes, jokes, screenshots, or something. But for #100, I don’t have anything like that prepared.

So… here’s a meme I stole off tumblr. It unfortunately doesn’t have 100 questions, and it’s about movies rather than television. What a terrible celebration post! Small bonus at the end, though.

1. A movie you’ve seen most times in cinema.
   Ehh there’s a bunch of movies I’ve seen twice in theaters. Frozen, Hairspray, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix spring to mind. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen any movie more than twice in theaters…
2. Your most rewatched movie.
   The Lion King, maybe? I mean I was a wee tyke when Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King and Aladdin were first out on VHS and those were all my JAMS as a kid. But I remember when we first moved to North Carolina, I think we didn’t have any tv antennas for a while, so I watched The Lion King every day for a week. I knew all the dialog by heart.
3. A movie you quote on a daily basis.
   For some reason I keep thinking “Excuse me sir, he is a prince” from Frozen even though that has literally never been a proper response for any situation I’ve been in.
4. Favorite movie soundtrack.
   OH GOD DON’T MAKE ME CHOOSE. I guess I could say the Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone soundtrack. I listened to it on its own a couple years ago, and I could feel the movie and just instantly knew the scene and the dialog that went along with the music. Just listening to the soundtrack on its own evokes some… feelings.
5. Top 5 films of your favorite actor and actress. Ermm I don’t have a favorite actor or actress. So, no.
   
6. Top 5 performances of your favorite actor and actress.
   I answered this question on tumblr I think, or a similar one that was about “top 5 performances from actors”. I went with Johnny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise because come on, Orlando Bloom in the Lord of the Rings series because of his ability to say more with a facial expression than with any dialog, Cary Elwes in Robin Hood Men In Tights for the wole reason that I thought Cary Elwes was an American good at doing British accents when it turns out he is in fact British, aaand I forgot who else I said. Oh well.
7. A movie storyline you wish you had actually lived.
   Beauty and the Beast, maybe? I mean I hate how the prince looks, but did you see that huge library? Plus, he’s rich. I am a shallow person, haha.
8. A movie that reminds you of your mom.
   “Mamma Mia” just because she watches it a lot.
9. A movie that reminds you of your dad.
   My dad is a deadbeat.
10. Favorite movies from your childhood.
    The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and The Land Before Time.
11. Favorite quote(s).
    I am fond of the use of the word “Savvy?” from Pirates of the Caribbean. That is where half of this blog name comes from.
12. Top 5 favorite female performances. Anjelica Huston in literally anything, Jennifer Elise Cox as Jan Brady in “The Brady Bunch Movie” and “A Very Brady Sequel”, Amy Adams in “Enchanted”, ummm… I guess I an only think of three.
    
13. Top 5 favorite male performances. Oh this is the question I answered on tumblr before, not #6. Oh well.
    
14. Favorite year for movies.
    2007?
15. Your favorite movies from [insert year].
    The movies in [insert year] are all really overrated, but I did really like [insert movie title]
16. Favorite [insert actor/actress/director] movies?
    A-ha, see, for this meme, people are meant to send you messages and fill in the bracketed things. I can’t do that as I’m just reposting it here. I have a terrible time picking favorites anyway.
17. List all you’ve seen from [insert actor/actress/director].  I’ll randomly go with Robin Williams for this one. I have seen Popeye, Mork & Minday, the episode of Faerie Tale Theatre he was in, Hook, FernGully, Aladdin, Toys, Mrs. Doubtfire, To Wong Foo Thanks For Everything Love Julie Newmar which I don’t recall him being in, Jumanji, The Birdcage, the episode of Friends he was in, Flubber, probably the two One Saturday Morning segments he was in, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Night At the Museum, part of RV, and one episode of The Crazy Ones. Holy crap I think I’ve seen more Robin Williams movies than I’ve seen any other actor’s movies.
    
18. An underrated actor.
    Orlando Bloom? Like I said, he’s great at acting with just his face. His line delivery is sometimes not great, but his FACIAL EXPRESSIONS.
19. An underrated actress.
20. Fff I don’t know.
    
21. An underrated director.
    I don’t know.
22. An overrated actor.
    Leonardo DiCaprio. For one thing I think there are plenty of better actors out there who deserve Oscars way more than he does. For another I have never found him attractive, even back in 1997.
23. An overrated actress.
    Well, not so much “overrated” but “oversaturing”, but Jennifer Lawrence. I’m really sick of how she’ll like fart and everyone’s all “OMG JUST LIKE ME. OMG SHE LIKES FOOD WHOA.” but a lot of what she does and says comes off as kind of not genuine to me. I mean how many more times is she going to trip at the Oscars?
24. An overrated director.
    I dunno.
25. A film you wish you had seen on the big screen.
    I’m sure the Indiana Jones movies were epic on the big screen. Star Wars movies too.
26. A movie you’ve seen that you think no one else’s here will have heard of?
    *Puts on hipster glasses* Eh, well… Hm. I don’t exactly sit in the field away from the main stream or anything, but… Ladyhawke? It’s got Rutger Hauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, and a young Matthew Broderick. What’s not to love?
27. A film that was better than the book.
    Well I haven’t read a lot of books that have movies based on them, and for all the ones I remember, the books were better. Maybe I’ll cheat and go with The Lizzie Bennett Diaries. That’s a web show and not a film, and not a direct adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, but it’s sure easier to watch and understand than the book.
28. Best remake.
    They aren’t exactly remakes, but the Brady Bunch movies were all awesome. They’re a combination of a straight-up movie version of the show, a parody of the show, and an update to the show, with the Brady family still firmly acting like it’s the 70s meanwhile they’re actually living in the 90s. Most of the humor comes from how ridiculous the Bradys are in contrast to everyone else, and isn’t just about them being stupid or whatever.
29. Your first favorite actor. :\
    
30. Your first favorite actress. /:
    
31. Favorite animated film.
    Argh umm well Frozen is still fresh in my mind. My top 5 is definitely Frozen, The Lion King, Aladdin, The Prince of Egypt, and Ratatouille. Maybe.
32. Your most anticipated films.
    I’m totally psyched for Jersey Boys, a biographical film about the rise of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons directed by Clint Eastwood of all people. And I’m patiently waiting for more news about Moana, an upcoming animated Disney film set in the South Pacific that’ll probably be renamed to “Soggy” or some other adjective.
33. Last movie that disappointed you.
    Oh gosh, there have been several. The first that springs to mind is “Me and Orson Welles”, which was supposed to be critically praised and whatever but it was so boring I turned it off after 30 minutes. If this question were about television shows I could go on forever.
34. Last movie that surpassed your expectations.
    Frozen. The ads for the movie made it look like some dumb caper starring an idiotic snowman and his even dumber reindeer sidekick and also there was snow and it just looked like the dumbest movie. But then a lot of people were saying it was good, so I watched it, and it WAS good.
35. Actor in need of new agent.
    James Marsden.
36. Actress in need of new agent.
    Ugh I dunno.
37. Share an unpopular film opinion you have.
    Well I already said the biggest taboos on the planet by revealing that I dislike Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, anything I say now will look great by comparison! Ummm I think Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films are really boring and I love The Hobbit movies because there’s so much action that I don’t feel like falling asleep during them.
38. Favorite Oscar win/speech.
    Walt Disney eventually just started going to the podium, saying “Thank you” and then leaving. A few times he just takes the Oscar and sits back down. Awesome.
39. Biggest Oscar snub(s).
    The Muppet Movie’s “Rainbow Connection” losing the Best Song to “It Goes Like It Goes”. Alan Rickman losing in general.
40. Who do you think is overdue for another nomination/win?
    Alan Rickman? Just let him win a category, he doesn’t even have to be in a movie.
41. How many movies have you seen (rough estimation)?
    Oh my god what why would you even… I’m going to guess it’s upwards of 300, probably more because there’s no way I remember every movie I’ve ever seen.
42. A movie that made you go ‘wtf was that’.
    Sucker Punch, in a good way.
43. A film that scarred you.
    Scarred or scared? Whenever I watch a ghost movie I spent at least the next night freaking out and sleeping in a ball under the covers. I don’t remember if I’ve seen Jaws all the way through, but it’s definitely partly that movie’s fault that I spent a lot of my childhood being terrified that there were sharks in the deep end of the pool, or that if I took a bath, sharks would come up through the bathtub drain somehow. To be fair, I lived in Florida for most of this shark terror, and you do tend to find alligators and whatnot in pools, and once there was actually a frog that came up through our toilet’s pipes, so that fear wasn’t entirely irrational.
44. Most movies watched in a single day.
    … 5? Sounds about right. Once I did a weird Johnny Depp marathon and ended up talking in a fake British accent the rest of the day.
45. A film that always makes you cry.
    Well the parents dying in Frozen always stirs me up a bit. The whole three times I’ve seen that movie.
46. A film that always makes you laugh.
    Robin Hood: Men in Tights
47. Movies that you think everyone should watch (not necessarily your favorites).
    I don’t know, Schindler’s List? I haven’t seen that movie but I feel like I should.
48. A movie that took you a couple of viewings to appreciate.
    All the Paranormal Activity movies benefit from a second viewing, because once you know to look for certain scary things, you end up finding even more.
49. A book you want to see adapted to the big screen.
    Anything by Diana Wynne Jones. I mean her Chrestomanci Series might lend itself better to a short-season tv series than a movie. Howl’s Moving Castle and its sequels might make for a good tv series as well. I know Howl’s Moving Castle was already turned into an animated movie, which was beautiful, but it changed a lot of stuff (for instance, Markle/Michael is 15 in the books rather than approximately 6, and he has a crush on one of Sophie’s two sisters). Plus it has sequels. The Dalemark Quartet would be awesome as a movie series, although given that one book is a very long ago-set prequel and the other book starts like 200 years in the future, that might be kind of hard to deal with.
50. A book you really, really, really don’t want to see made into a film.
    …Don’t have one? All the books I read I want to see adapted to a movie or tv show, unless I don’t care about the book at all.
51. Favorite child performance.
    Gawd why can’t I remember any of the movies I’ve seen? There was one movie that had a child actor in it who was the most convincing kid I’ve ever seen, but it seems I can’t remember what movie or actor it was.
52. Favorite pre-code.
    I have seen a grand total of zero pre-code movies.
53. Favorite silent film.
    The only silent films I’ve seen are Nosferatu and Chicago, and I hated them both.
54. Favorite coming of age film.
    Haha, I don’t know, “Carrie”? That movie’s about transitioning to adulthood and learning to deal with puberty, right?
55. Favorite superhero film.
    Don’t tell anyone, but I like the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies. Even the third one. I think people are too harsh on the movies, although they probably really would have benefited from less Kristen Dunst.
56. Best cinematography.
    Eh.. Fiddler on the Roof? It won an Oscar for its cinematography I think.
57. Movies you know you should watch, but can’t bring yourself to do it?
    Citizen Kane. I know it’s like the most classic of all classic movies, but it just looks so boring. I also feel like I should watch Platoon and Schindler’s List but I haven’t found the right time to sit down and watch those movies yet – I don’t want to do it when I’m too happy because of all the mood whiplash it’ll give me, but I also don’t want to wait until I’m really sad because I mean “Life Is Beautiful” was depressing enough, I feel like those other films might make me want to kill myself or something.
58. Favorite genres.
    I used to think I was a total comedy fan, but then I realized the proportion of how many straight-up comedy movies I enjoy to how many comedy movies exist is a pretty small one, and I think I actually enjoy Adventure films in some capacity (like Comedy-Adventure, Fantasy-Adventure) more. I also love musicals, but I consider musicals to be a medium rather than a genre, because it’s ridiculous to say that The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Sweeney Todd, Repo! The Genetic Opera, Bye Bye Birdie, and Hairspray are all the same genre. It’s essentially like saying Psycho and any Doris Day movie are the same genre.
59. Least favorite genres.
    Slasher/gore/splatter/etc. I don’t mind a little blood and guts in my movies, but I don’t like it being so excessive and disgusting. That’s what’s sort of neat about Sweeney Todd, and I suppose Sleepy Hollow – the blood is so weirdly hued and saturated versus how desaturated everything else is, it makes it look kind of fantastical and even though there’s a lot of blood, it’s not that gross to look at.
60. Biggest movie pet peeve.
    Ehhh I hate it when characters get information wrong so you’re not sure if the character or the crew is stupid. This is also a tv pet peeve – I mentioned in a Glee recap that Rachel says she relates to Natalie Wood because she was also Jewish, even though Natalie Wood was Russian Orthodox Christian, so I don’t know if it’s just Rachel getting that wrong or if the writers don’t know how to fact check (I would bet the latter). Also I hate when long credit sequences don’t have an after-credits scene. I know the theater janitors hate that too because it means they have to wait for like 10 minutes for people to leave the theater as they wait for a scene that will never play.

Bonus: How long will it take me to finish reviewing/recapping the shows on here, including this week in the count?

Boy Meets World: 2 years, give or take a week. (episode 58 goes up this week, there’s 158 total episodes, 52 weeks in a year)

Glee: 106 weeks at current episode count. The last season has yet to air, but it’s likely it will only have 13 episodes. In that case, about 120 weeks, or 2 years and almost 4 months.

Degrassi: Again, the show hasn’t ended yet. There’s just over 400 episodes at the time of writing, from Degrassi Junior High to Degrassi: TNG. If I continue to review four episodes every weekend, I should finish at about the same time I finish Boy Meets World. But by then there’ll probably be even more episodes to review. Maybe I’ll never finish. I’ll be 50 and still be doing Degrassi reviews. Degrassi becomes the longest-running show in history.

Girl Meets World: Well the first season hasn’t even aired, so no clue when I’ll be finished reviewing that series. I think probably October will mark the end of season 1, unless they air Girl Meets World like Phineas and Ferb which is STILL in its fourth season that began in 2012. It doesn’t even have a huge number of episodes, they just air like three new episodes and then nothing for months.

So since, bizarrely, I’m currently set to finish reviewing these shows all around the same time, I’m wondering… what would I do after I finish? Do I just end the blog, never to post again? Do I cover other teen-oriented shows that are silly but sometimes cover Issues? I’m thinking doing a comparison blog of different shows featuring a group of friends living in New York could be interesting. Or comparing shows featuring a childless couple living in New York. Or comparing shows featuring working-class women whose family’s are all kind of screwed up.

I’m definitely leaning towards either more stupid teen shows or “friends in New York” shows, because hopefully in two years time I’ll have gotten over how boring and tired I think Friends is now (it’s just seeing the same jokes so many times not only on other shows, but on multiple viewings of Friends, I’m just bored with it), and how angry I am at How I Met Your Mother for basically the entire second half of the show.

But that’s me, thinking so far ahead into the future for no good reason. For one thing, I probably won’t even finish all these shows in two years because I don’t know if I can actually handle doing four episodes of Degrassi every weekend for two years. It’s sort of exhausting. It would sure be awesome if I was getting paid to do anything of this, but, alas, no.

In other news, I have a long-neglected Ghost Hunters blog that I’m planning on going back to updating soon. I think it’s too much to ask that I update that weekly in addition to reviewing the six episodes I do every week on this blog, but if you like Ghost Hunters, or hate it, check it out? I just recap what happens and count off the number of things they dismiss as either having a rational explanation or not being good enough evidence (pretty much any time there’s an “orb” on the cameras they dismiss it as insufficient evidence, for instance), versus the number of times they’re convinced it was some sort of spook what done caused the disturbance.

Well, that’s it. Here’s to over 300 more posts to make in the next 2 years!

Oh here’s a couple updates: I changed the site’s theme AGAIN. Unfortunately it has endless scrolling, which I hate, but I think it still works better the way it is now if you’re trying to archive binge or whatever.

Also it seems like if I did feel there was a need/want to release these posts as a book, the screenshots would all have to come out. Screenshots are a very iffy item on the “fair use” copyright scale. I think I could probably get away with one or two small screenshots per review if this were in a book I was charging money for, but I certainly couldn’t have the book filled with the 10-20 screenshots per episode this blog has. I still think it would be kind of funny if I replaced all the screenshots with drawings, because I believe that would be 100% legal as long as it was obvious it was a drawing and not a tracing or just some Photoshop filters.

And finally, I’m not sure anyone was curious about this, but I’m planning on reviewing The Glee Project in between seasons 2 and 3, and 3 and 4, of Glee. I don’t imagine those will end up being very involved reviews, so I might be able to crank them out pretty fast. Either way, the estimated completion time for the Glee reviews is going to be somewhere around two years and 5 months now (or even longer), instead of 2 years, 3 months.

We start with a… new opening? It’s not a new season. Or even a mid-season premiere. Also the opening features clips from episodes that haven’t aired yet. Either someone uploaded the wrong episode, or this is a weird syndication thing where they just the same opening credits for the entire show rather than the opening credits that go with each season – kind of like how they use the Saved By the Bell opening credits for Good Morning Miss Bliss even though they’re technically different shows [my theory is that Saved By the Bell is the high school experience Zach Morris of Good Morning Miss Bliss WISHES he had]

Anyway, shenanigans.

Cory and Shawn were trying to avoid Joey and Frankie. That’s all you need to know.

Feeny calls in Frankie and his dad, Frankie.

Apparently Joey burned Cory and Shawn’s clothes. That’s not cool. Frankie’s dad Frankie assures Feeny that young Frankie will straighten up and fly right. He does it in a hilariously angry-dramatic way, the way only wrestlers can do. Wrestlers acting on tv shows are always awesome.

Also Mrs. Stechino was in the scene the entire time. Behind Frankie and Frankie.

Frankie confronts Cory and Shawn. He is upset with them for ratting on Joey and getting him suspended. Cory offers to be Frankie’s friend if he agrees not to beat him and Shawn up. Frankie agrees, on the understanding that this is a sincere offer and not a way for them to avoid punishment.

There’s some Turner plotline with some girl, I don’t care. She wants to meet up with him. Her voice sounds pretty sexy on the answering machine. Funnily enough Shawn said pretty much the exact same thing as I was typing that up. Shawn and I have the same taste in women’s voices. Which is weird because I’m straight and he’s a fictional character.

I guess Turner was rich at some point and so was Melanie, and he gave up having money and a hot girlfriend just to be a teacher. What a mook. And man, it sure is too bad that rich people can’t be teachers.

Frankie walks Cory home, and asks Amy if Cory can sleep over at his house that Friday. I gotta admit, that sort of melted my heart. This big huge scary guy wants to have a sleep over with his friend!

Meanwhile or later or something, I guess Melanie’s coming over. Oh, Melanie is sexy-voice, by the way. Forgot to mention that. She’s the richest girl in West Port, Connecticut. Considering Connecticut is like the size of a thumbnail I don’t know if that’s all that impressive.

So this is Melanie.

I was expecting like Kate Moss or someone. Oh well. Her actress, Eliza Coyle, first appeared onscreen in the movie “Shakes the Clown” in the groundbreaking role of “Enthusiastic Mime”. So that’s gotta count for something.

Shawn doesn’t want to be friends with Frankie because he’s big and scary. Cory says his mom says that there’s always good in people. We should turn that into an idiom like “Even Hitler liked dogs.” Or… tea. I don’t know. Apparently there’s just this thing where whenever anyone likes or does anything someone else doesn’t like, the second person will be like “Yeah well Hitler was a vegetarian as well!” even though a lot of that stuff (like Hitler being a vegetarian) isn’t true.

Shawn goes on about how Frankie’s using all these 7th graders as his slaves, and then Shawn realizes if they’re friends with Frankie, they’ll have slaves too! Haha, Hitler and slaves, this is a comedy goldmine right here. Move over, Daniel Tosh.

Turner and Melanie are on a date. They aren’t going to end up getting together in the end anyway so I don’t care.

Frankie wants to know what their (er, his, Cory’s, and Shawn’s, not Turner and Melanie’s) relationship is. He has observed how ridiculous Cory and Shawn are being with the bullying people out of their seats and getting dry-cleaning delivered. He gets up get some air.

A group of kids are sitting in the hallway. He asks if he can sit with them, and they all get up and leave. The audience “awwwww”s sadly at that, and for once I agree with the overreacting audience.

Feeny shows up then, because Feeny is magic, and Frankie asks for an explanation. If he started hanging out with a better crowd, Feeny had told him, then he would be a better person. But the better crowd just turned into jerks. All he wants is to be liked, Mr. Feeny, is that so hard to ask??

Feeny says that everyone wants to be liked, so that’s not so ridiculous. He also tells Frankie that he’ll stop being walked on when he starts standing up for himself.

Frankie left a message asking to meet with Cory and Shawn to discuss their friendship. Man… answering machines, man. How many 90s tv series had at least one episode dealing with answering machines? Like, a lot. How many shows these days have plots involving voicemail? Not a lot? I don’t know.

The 7th graders want revenge. Luckily Frankie was in the school bathroom for some reason and they start running off in fear. But Shawn tells them not to fear Frankie. Frankie has a poetic soul, and is gentle deep down, and you should stop judging him and stuff. Cory and Shawn have learned their lesson somehow about not taking advantage of having a giant, scary friend.

The three guys leave to get a burger.

The end credits scene is Mr. Stechino being all wrestler-y. Amy comes downstairs to see what all the noise is, and when she realizes it’s Mr. Stechino, she tells him to knock it off, because he doesn’t act that way at the PTA meetings.

Then Eric comes in and Mr. Stechino lifts him up.

I don’t know even care how the Turner subplot ended. Turner subplots are the worst.

And I guess we all learned a valuable lesson about not judging people or something. It’s weird that Cory’s doesn’t start angsting about his break-up until the next episode, especially since Topanga actually was in this episode. She said two things and never showed up after that, which has been her thing since season 2.

Whoa this episode features a prominent Broadway star who actually gets to sing.

Haha. Anyway I can’t remember if I mentioned it in the last post, but apparently Fox is considering cutting the last season of Glee to a half-season order rather than a full 22 episodes, and they’ll probably push it so it doesn’t air until January 2015 at the earliest. The season 5 finale of Glee was the 4th-least watched thing on network television from 8 pm to 11, beating out only two shows on the CW – one of which is not coming back for a season 2 and one of which is in its 9th season so it’s understandable that its ratings are terrible – and beating out the series premiere of Riot, which Glee was supposed to be the lead-in and ratings-drawer for. Haha oops. That Riot show was pretty bad, though. I’d rather Fox buy the rights to rerun old episodes of Whose Line Is It Anyway. The games they played were all right, but the improv-ers weren’t.

But anyway, I don’t really understand how the whole ratings thing works, but even though Glee had more viewers than the CW, the CW actually got better ratings that night. I believe this means that The Originals and Supernatural had more viewers aged 18-49 per household, which is the primary demographic. I can believe this, since it seems like it’s mostly whiny middle schoolers who still enjoy Glee. Everyone else is like me and just so disappointed.

This has actually been a terribly disappointing year in television for me. Glee gets somehow even more terrible, How I Met Your Mother was terrible, Community got cancelled, the one new show that premiered in fall that I kind of liked got cancelled after three episodes, and even Downton Abbey was kind of meh. And the Doctor Who 50th anniversary was great and all, but sure didn’t feel like a celebration of the 50 years the show has been in existence, more like a neat little movie to follow up the last 8 years of the show. I’m at the point now where I basically don’t even want to watch any new shows anymore. What’s the point? They all either get cancelled when they don’t deserve it, or stay on so long that they make everyone really sad and angry.

On another note, the CW shows actually got pre-empted for a baseball game in one region, so who knows how much better those shows’ ratings might have been if that hadn’t happened?

Well anyway, the review.

It starts with a recap, the first time a “that’s what you missed on Glee” has come up in-show.

After that, we start with the glee club performing an extremely obviously autotuned version of “Don’t Stop Believin’”. Or else it was natural and Finn has actually been a cyborg this whole time. Actually that would explain a lot if he was. You know this really crazy part of me half-believes that Cory Monteith isn’t actually dead, but Ryan Murphy has him locked in some room somewhere and orchestrated this whole death thing in order to get Cory out of the way of Lea Michele’s career or something? Like I said, really crazy.

Anyway Quinn runs out partway through to vomit.

Kurt says they totes need Rachel to be any good. UGH. I hate this. They’re always either complaining about how Rachel’s such a glory hog and they never get a chance to do anything, or else they’re all “ehhnnn we can’t win without herrrr”. Just wait til season 2, eesh.

Schue says they can just layer Mercedes and Santana’s voices over Quinn. Artie says that’ll work for Invitationals but not Sectionals and certainly not Regionals. Invitationals?? What the heck are Invitationals??

Seriously, what? The show choir performance system on this show doesn’t make any sense and just makes less sense as it goes on. This is literally the only time they mention Invitationals in the entire series. They haven’t even mentioned it before this. Did they mention Sectionals before, actually? They’ve mentioned Regionals and called Vocal Adrenaline National champions. Invitationals?? I can’t even figure out what that would mean. Uggh.

Oh god this food looks good.

Oh right I forgot to also mention that Finn asks Schue to go easy on Quinn so she doesn’t mess up the baby or something. Oh and Finn hasn’t told his mom about the baby yet. Neither of these things are important to this episode. Thanks, Finn.

Anyway Terri’s eating a lot. Schue asks her why she hasn’t had any morning sickness, because Quinn has some a lot. Terri says that’s good because it means the baby won’t be a mongoloid. Good old offense Terri. Anyway the real answer is of course because Terri’s not actually pregnant, or else it could be because all women experience pregnancy differently. Some women don’t really show any systems other than weight gain. You know some women even still get periods, or else blood spotting which is similar, while pregnant? Eh, but Terri makes a reference to The Exorcist to explain that she gets really sick at work every day.

This guy shows up to take their order even though they’ve clearly already ordered. Maybe their first water’s shift ended. Schue recognizes him. Apparently he was in Schue’s Spanish class 6 years ago, but now he ages to Carmel High (home of Vocal Adrenaline.) Schue is confused as to how he’s attending a different high school even though he should have graduated. Turns out they actually pay for their best performers to intentionally fail so they can stay as part of Vocal Adrenaline. Why didn’t the writers of Glee pull that for the McKinley kids instead of erupting the show into the crazy mess they turned it into?

Emma encourages Finn to stay with Glee and go after a music scholarship, since it’s easier than getting a sports scholarship. I don’t know if either of that’s true, I played clarinet for 7 years and got an academic scholarship because I’m smart or something idk. [For fun I almost left all my typos in that sentence but I thought it might look like I was trying too hard]. Finn’s worried, anyway, because they totes can’t win without Rachel, which they know because they’ve performed as a group like twice so far and neither time was in a competition setting. There’s definitely something terrible wrong with this show choir if their victory is hinging on the presence of one person. If this was a solo/ensemble show, sure. We were like threatened with death in our clarinet ensemble if we didn’t show up because there was only like 7 of us. But if we were at a band competition and someone was missing, sure we had to make up for that, but it wasn’t like “OH NO WE’RE GOING TO LOSE BECAUSE THAT ONE PERSON IS MISSING”.

Jacob ben Israel is interviewing Rachel for the school paper and he tells her to give him his bra, or at least a peek at her boobs, or “sweater puppies”. She tells him to get lost, adding that no one reads the school paper anyway – which was definitely true in my school. Everyone always took a paper but no one ever read it. Jacob tells her that she should reconsider her stance because all the great actresses took their tops off. Did Meryl Streep ever go topless in a movie? Man, Meryl Streep would make this show awesome. Although not even Whoopi Goldberg could improve it, so maybe not.

Schue has asked Emma to look up the file of a former student: April Rhodes. She was a senior when he was a freshman, and he had a crush on her. It turns out she never graduated. I don’t remember if they’ve explained this yet, but Will is hoping to recruit her to New Directions, to fill up the vacant Rachel spot. She was in the glee club as well and I guess was good or something. I wonder what untalented bozo they got to play her? Haha, I’m pretending like I don’t already know so I can be surprised when they show it’s Kristin Chenoweth.

Lady’s got some range. April’s a boozer. Also she’s a squatter, meaning she lives in empty houses that are not owned by her. She explains that she and her boyfriend Vinny were convinced they were going to be big stars, so they dropped out of school and headed to Broadway. Vinny dumped her and she had a set of mixed-race twins, then came back to Ohio to be a loser. Schue invites her to join the glee club.

At the glee club, everyone’s all “No schue, we still totes can’t win with Rachel!” and Finn’s all “so old people can join glee club now?” Wtf Finn, rude.

April shows her stuff by singing “Maybe This Time” from Cabaret, which is intercut with Rachel singing the same song as she rehearses for the show.

Hey wait, why does the choir room have a spotlight in it?

But the auditorium ISN’T using a spotlight?

I like the the jazz band is all ladies. And has an accordion and clarinet. As you may have guessed from me mentioning it several times, I used to play clarinet.

Haha, I have the DVD player going 1.2x speed so it takes a little less time to review, and April’s last note on “win” sounds hilarious sped up like that.

Kurt was moved to tears by the performance.

No joke, his actor, Chris Colfer, actually was moved to tears in real life because he’s such a big fan of Ms. Chenoweth.

So I guess April got officially re-enrolled in school even though I think technically as a 40 year old dropout they wouldn’t let her do that and she’d instead need to just work on a GED. In Spanish class, she answers a question wrong – it’s if you’re supposed to use “por” or “para” to say you’re going out for the day. She says “para”, the answer is “por”, and she says she’ll just pour another cup of her cranberry martini. Then she says it’s a joke and it’s really just hot chocolate.

Anyway, remember this scene for season 3 for when Schue suddenly doesn’t know the correct usage of “de”.

Schue tells April the glee kids still aren’t totally sure about letting her join. She draws too much attention to herself and no one likes her. Just like no one likes Rachel! April figures out how to resolve this, by:

1) Getting Kurt drunk and giving him magazines containing muscular male nudes.

2) Teaching Tina and Mercedes how to shoplift by carrying stuff between their thighs.

3) Let’s not go there with Matt and Puck.

Now everyone loves her except Artie and the cheerleaders I guess.

Rachel rehearses the song “Cabaret” from the musical “Cabaret”. Sandy says she’s not mature enough for the role. Yeah I don’t know why he’d think that, Cabaret is only a musical about a risque dance club in Germany on the eve of World War II that that deals with subjects such as German nationalism and abortion in some versions ends with the club’s host getting marked with the pink triangle and presumably getting sent to a concentration camp, I don’t know why this wouldn’t be the perfect show for 15 and 16 year olds to perform at school.

Later Rachel runs lines from the play. Actually the specific lines were apparently written specifically for the movie, but I guess some revivals of the show use the scene so that’s not super ridiculous.

Rachel commends Finn’s ability to read one line of dialog and tells him he should audition for the play. Considering the entire cast seems to be Rachel and some random other girls, that might not be such a terrible idea, if only Finn was actually good at acting.

Finn says he could be convinced to join if Rachel agreed to come back to the Glee club. Then he invites her to go bowling. Schue and April come in. They’re going to practice Don’t Stop Believin’. Finn’s all “but that’s Rachel’s part” even though 1) Rachel quit the glee club, and 2) Schue already gave the solo part to Quinn in episode 2 so it’s not Rachel’s part even if she was still in the club.

Kurt barfs on Emma’s shoes. Emma thinks he got the alcohol from April. He did, so… okay.

Emma tells Schue to rethink having April on the glee club, since the club is for kids to find their talents or something, and April is boozed out of her mind and taking chances away from other kids or something. She also tells him she thinks he’s got her on the club for the wrong reasons. Will? Interested in another woman who isn’t his wife? Ha ha, that’s silly.

April talks about hot high school boys. Rachel basically calls April a loser. April says she was the biggest star in the school back in the day, and now that she has the spotlight again, she’s never letting it go. Secretly – or not, since I’m typing it right now – I’m hoping something like this ends up happening to Rachel in the end. She just fails miserably even though she has talent and becomes a alcoholic ephebophile squatting in foreclosed homes in Ohio.

Finn and Rachel go bowling. Meanwhile, coincidentally, Will and April are bowling at the same time. Schue tells April he’s concerned she’s a bad influence on the glee club. She says he’s right and immediately resolves to never drink again. Well that was easy.

Schue then mentions he’s got a preview showcase lined up for her to show off her talents. He confesses he used to have a crush on her and wanted to sing with her, and she pulls him away to a karaoke bar.

PIC I didn’t mean to take this cap, but I’m leaving it in because look at this guy!

They sing Heart’s “Alone”. The sad middle-aged people all love it.

Meanwhile Rachel and Finn eat pepperoni pizza even though Rachel says she’s a vegan in a later episode. Rachel won’t put her fingers in the bowling balls because gross, but then she kisses her last ball before launching it which is WAY grosser. I mean don’t they like oil the bowling lanes?

Anyway the first part of this scene has a Huey Lewis song in the background so that’s cool.

The glee club debates what’s making Quinn sick. Kurt theorizes lactose intolerance, but Artie says that doesn’t explain the crying and mood swings. Speaking as a lactose intolerant person myself, I have to say, maybe the crying is related? I know I get sad sometimes when I remember that I can’t eat pasta with jarred alfredo sauce on it because it makes me violently ill.

Haha, one of these days I have to start really going overboard with the “Speaking as one who knows a little about the issue myself” stuff. Like, “Speaking as someone who used to be a one-handed pitcher for the Yankees, I feel qualified to explain…” “As a former matador, I can tell you…”

Anyway Puck says Quinn’s pregnant, so they’re all shocked. Who is the father?! For a second Puck looks like he’s going to say it’s him, but then he says it’s Finn of course.

Rachel comes in just then and announces herself. Everyone ignores her and gossips about Finn and Quinn. I wish I still had it in me to feel bad for Rachel, but I just can’t anymore. Not after season 5.

Meanwhile Finn has submitted a scholarship application for music, even though it’s only October or so at this point and he’s only a sophomore in high school. Looking back at these episodes, I wonder if Finn and Quinn were meant to be seniors or at least juniors while Rachel was supposed to be a sophomore, rather than having ALL the characters except Tina and Artie be in the same grade.

Rachel punches Finn for lying to her. What does he think he’s doing, kissing her and leading her on when he knew Quinn was pregnant with his baby? …Good point, Rachel. No complaints from me. Finn’s an awful person.

He says he only did it so he could get a scholarship, go to college, and take care of his baby, which he couldn’t do without Rachel. He acknowledges what he did was wrong. …Yeah, it was. Again, I don’t really feel I have anything to add to this conversation. I get where he’s coming from and why he did it, but that’s a pretty crappy thing to do, leading a girl on like that so you don’t look like a loser.

Rachel quits the glee club for like the fourth time after this. Yawn.

The glee club is about to perform in front of their first real audience. April strolls in wearing a non-matching costume. Also she’s drunk. When Will confronts her on this, she says when she agreed to stop drinking last night, well, she was drunk, so he can’t hold her to that. April 1, Will 0.

This is only kind of relevant.

They perform “Last Name” while doing a great line-dancing routine. April sings the solo over everyone else. Just like Rachel would.

Also, notably, the audience for an entirely New Directions show is packed for the literally the only time in the show’s history.

After the first half of the show (or the one song?? I don’t know their set list), April says she’s quitting the club. It felt great performing out there, but it’s not fair to the other kids that she’s stealing their spotlight like that. It’s too late for her, but not for them. Schue tells her there’s always Branson*, and she walks down the hall saying “Branson, eh?” as some cues from “Maybe This Time” play.

*Branson, Missouri is called the “Live Entertainment Capital of the World”.

The glee kids are all buzzed on how well their performance was. Schue tells them April’s not coming back, and they’re like “oh no we totes can’t win without April” or something.

And then…

AAAAH OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT??

I am not kidding when I say when I looked up at the screen and saw her in the doorway I jumped partway out of my seat like I was watching Paranormal Activity or something.

It turns out it’s actually Rachel and not the angry ghost of a murdered student. Rachel is there to announce that she can fill in for April. Everyone’s like “You’re suddenly okay with being an understudy” and she says she is, since she quit the play because helping people is more important than… starring in a play or something. Did… did Rachel learn something?

…That doesn’t make sense. Did Rachel just feel more bad for Finn than she felt mad at him? I mean earlier Sue was saying she agreed that Sandy was getting over-the-top in directing (apparently he wrote himself into the play as Cleopatra), so it can’t just be because being in the play was too awful.

Well whatever. They sing Queen’s “Somebody to Love” and Mercedes wails on a long note at the end, like always. And we’ve all learned a valuable lesson about something or something.

Best/Worst song: Uggh I can’t even remember. Umm well they only sang Don’t Stop Believin for like 20 seconds so that barely counts, but I’ll say that’s Worst. For Best, Maybe This Time. Kristin nail it and Lea Michele’s voice actually worked pretty well with hers despite Kristin being more experienced and, well, talented.

Song count: I remembered I was planning on keeping a count of how many song performances there actually was in the show so I can angrily contradict the show’s count later on. First some guidelines: Only songs that actually were in the episode count (so songs that were recorded by cut from the episode do not count), and only songs that were sung by at least one of the characters count. So none of the background music sung by the Swingles or music that just comes out of stereos like Single Ladies in the last episode.

I’m also keeping a count that doesn’t include the “partials” – that’ll be stuff like the Don’t Stop Believin that was in this episode or the audition songs from the pilot, where someone sang but the song was really short. Because I don’t know if the Official Glee Count includes stuff like when Emma sang “All By Myself” with the radio because a) the radio was also playing it, and b) she only sang like two lines of it.

32/24

Meaning there have been 32 songs total sung by the cast on the show, but only 24 were like “real” ones that took up significant screentime and/or were sung beginning, middle, and end.

Also apparently in Acafellas, one of the background songs was actually sung by Puck. Huh.

“It’s Late!”, March 29 1987

Is this the only Degrassi episode title containing an exclamation mark? I think so.

Well anyway, remember this from episode 2?

Featured on the steps are Voula’s dad and FORESHADOWING FOR A FUTURE EPISODE.

There’s Shane and Spike, chillin on the steps. This screencap has now become relevant.

We start with a totally hot 8th grader party at Lucy’s house. Everyone’s slow dancing in an awful orange glow. Spike and Shane are making out in the hallway until Joey and some other guys bug them. Then they go into a bedroom and relax on the bed. AND the door is locked. Aw, man. What are those crazy kids up to in there?

Spike’s mom lectures her about how when she’s late for school, she makes her mom late for her job. On top of that, Spike’s been thoroughly unpleasant at home lately. Spike’s just like “Get off my back!”

Spike slinks into home room, and Raditch says this is the second time this week she’s been late, and that it’s disappointing when such a good student sets such a bad example. One thing that’s awesome about Spike is she’s got total punk hair, but dresses like a very fashionable secretary half the time and gets good grades.

Anyway the kids have to prepare for their futures or something. Also Lucy’s having another party like the one she had the previous month – meaning the opening scene of the episode was one month prior – and Shane asks if Spike wants to come. She doesn’t, and she yells at him to leave her alone.

“Band Practise”

Melanie talks to Kathleen about horoscopes or something. Melanie also mentions she really wants a hickey. Kathleen’s grossed out by this, but Melanie says having a hickey means you’ve got a boyfriend. Melanie’s so adorable, man. Snake says hi to her and continues down the hallway, and Melanie worries she’ll never get a boyfriend. Kathleen surprises us by making a reasonable statement by pointing out that Melanie’s only 12, so there’s plenty of time to get a boyfriend.

Also it turns out that Yick has a crush on Melanie. But Melanie likes Snake! Uh-oh!

Wheels and Joey discuss Lucy’s party for some reason, and how Wheels’s mom wouldn’t even let him turn the lights off if he had a party. They wonder if Shane and Spike really did it. Ugh, Shane, Spike, and Snake, all in one review? Sorry if I accidentally call anyone by one of the other names.

Shane comes in right at that moment. Joey and Wheels are anxious to know if Shane and Spike really had sex. Shane won’t say either way, saying “Why, haven’t you ever had sex?” (Joey and Wheels are like “Oh, yeah, totally” and it’s totally not obvious that they’re complete liars or anything), and then Shane says it’s none of their business if he had sex or not. Dang, you go, Shane. It IS none of their business.

They also ask why Spike won’t talk to Shane anymore. Shane doesn’t know, and he’s obviously sad about it. Joey theorizes maybe Spike is on her period or something.

The twins find Spike in the bathroom. What is it with this show and bathrooms?? I guess it’s the most private place to have a conversation in a school, but it’s still really weird that there are so many scenes set in bathrooms on this show. Come to think of it, there’s a fair number of scenes set in locker rooms on Saved By the Bell, not to mention Glee – although a good part of Glee involves a football team so that makes sense there are scenes set in a locker room.

Well anyway the twins ask Spike what’s wrong, because she’s obviously upset about something, and she hasn’t spoken to the twins in a while. I think this is the first episode she’s actually talked to them at all, so… what?? Yeah, I mean, that “LD’s dad goes to the hospital” episode was the first time she spoke ever and this is the first episode since then where she’s said anything. It is completely news to me that she’s friends with the twins.

So it turns out Spike’s period is way late, and she thinks she’s pregnant. That always bugs me on tv shows when the character is like “my period has always been on time before!” I mean, that seems especially unusual that a 13 or 14 year old would have an extremely regular period, but those other shows where the person is like “my period is A DAY LATE I MUST be pregnant because I’m always EXACTLY on time!!” just irritate me.

…Well, one of the twins expends the helpful advice that Spike can’t be pregnant since she didn’t have sex. Like, duh. But Spike reveals she did have sex. The other twin says it’s fine, though, because you can’t get pregnant your first time having sex. The first twin doesn’t think that’s true.

There’s a short scene where Melanie walks by Yick and just says hi and walks away, paralleling what Snake did earlier to her. Yick doesn’t think she’ll ever notice him, but Arthur says they just need to work out a plan to charm her.

After school, Spike heads to her mom’s place of work. Her mom is a hair stylist, and is currently working on a customer who’s telling about some other woman who’s pregnant with her 7th child. Spike asks her mom if it’s true that you can’t get pregnant your first time having sex. Spike’s mom says this is indeed not true, and apparently 1 in 5 girls get pregnant their first time. I wonder where this belief came from? Was it from guys who were trying to coax skittish virgins into having sex by saying “Look, don’t worry, you won’t get pregnant!” Or maybe that theory was started by Kathleen, she’s certainly proven to have an inventive state of reality before.

Spike’s mom and her customer laugh about other crazy beliefs, like that you can’t get pregnant if you stand up afterwards (which is not true, but I can see why people would think that). The customer has apparently heard a really good one, and that’s if you keep your eyes closed during sex, you won’t get pregnant. What even.

Spike’s mom also reveals she was only 17 when she had Spike (whose real name is Christine, by the way). Spike’s mom had to drop out of university (or maybe just high school and it’s that she couldn’t go to university). The customer is all “Well you can be sure she’s going to university!” Meanwhile Spike’s crying in the back room.

I don’t know if there’s a connection between Spike’s hair and her mom being a hair stylist, by the way. I know the actress who plays Spike styled her hair that way just for casual, though.

Meanwhile, or the next day, or something, Yick’s planning on charming the pants off of Melanie, in a purely figurative manner. He rehearses on Arthur in the stairwell. “Your eyes are like swimming pools,” he says.

Arthur notices Snake and that kid who is in the entire series but I can’t remember his name, and says hello. Snake just says “Yeah, okay Arthur,” and walks away. Snake is awesome. His hair looks super weird in this episode, though.

Yick approaches Melanie and quickly says “Your eyes are so blue they look like pimming swools.” Melanie and Kathleen laugh at him, asking what a “pimming swool” is. Yick runs away in embarrassment, calling Arthur a broomhead on the way.

In studyhall, the twins tell Spike to get a pregnancy test. She doesn’t want to, because it’ll be embarrassing, and her mom will kill her if she’s pregnant. The twins say she still oughtta know for sure. Spike catches Shane smiling at her from across the room. The girls all look at him like this:

He responds with a brief puzzled look before going back to his work.

After studyhall, Shane catches Spike and demands to know what’s going on. She tells him she thinks she’s pregnant, and he backs away slowly and leaves through the stairwell. Aw, Shane. You seemed like such a great guy before.

I think Voula’s the only person on this show besides Arthur who is confirmed to have a sister.

Voula’s sister had a baby, so Voula’s showing everybody the 50 pictures she has of the baby. Man, as annoying as that is, at least you don’t have to see all of them every time you log on to Facebook. I don’t want to see your hundreds of photos of anything that you uploaded 40 times a day, baby or not. And here’s a good point: My sister has a friend who had a stillbirth or a really late-term miscarriage. So I imagine it would be extremely painful for her to see other people posting at least 10 photos of their baby a day and never shutting up about their baby for 8 freaking months. By all means, take a ridiculous amount of photos of your child and gush about them to your friends, but… let’s not be so excessive about it, maybe?

She looks crazy. Crazy about BABIES.

This is Alexa. Alexa doesn’t start being important for a while. Alexa is the best, because she’s sort of like Melanie but also super enthusiastic and kind of vapid. In a later episode she expresses a wish to have just a little anorexia so she can get back in shape. Some of the other characters helpfully point out that anorexia is a disease and you can’t just have a little of it until you don’t need it anymore. Alexa’s just so dumb it’s kind of hard not to like her, even though she says such dumb things.

Anyway she says she can’t wait until she starts having kids. Lucy says babies are gross and pee like 12 times a day. Alexa doesn’t care, though. Oh also Alexa is one of multiple Greek characters of Degrassi.

Raditch reads the “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” sonnet to the class for some reason. Spike and Shane give each other sad looks. Joey notices and makes a good series suspicious “WTF” faces. The twins also look sad. Everyone is sad. I’m sad. You’re sad. They’re sad. But we don’t have lingering camera angles to show it, so it doesn’t count.

Joey demands to know again if Shane had sex. Shane asks what they would do if they got a girl pregnant. Joey jumps to the (correct) conclusion that Spike is pregnant. Shane denies it, and goes on to say that it wouldn’t be the guy’s problem if a girl was pregnant, right? Joey’s just like “…Well it would be his baby too.” Shane’s all “Forget it!” and leaves. Wheels wonders if this means Shane actually did have sex with Spike, but Joey believes Shane’s just bluffing and came up with the pregnancy thing to make it seem like they had sex. Erm… why wouldn’t he have just come out and told them if he actually had sex, though?

Wait, he DID have sex. Arrgh I just got stuck in a logic windmill, sorry.

Er, so, Melanie’s horoscope says she’ll have a fateful encounter with a guy that day, and receive a surprise gift. Arthur and Yick are spying on her and Arthur gives Yick a vase full of flowers off of Ms. Avery’s desk to give to Melanie, so her horoscope is all true and whatever.

Turns to Melanie’s allergic to the flowers even though she didn’t have any reaction to them when she was just in Avery’s classroom.

Later, the twins offer to go to the drugstore with Spike to buy a pregnancy test. That’s nice. Also Yick asks Melanie if she wants to go skating with him on Saturday morning. Melanie lights up when she realizes it’s a date, and even though their astrological signs are incompatible, she agrees to go with him.

So even later-er, Spike picks up a test. The girls have a brief discussion about all the different pregnancy test options – like if the one that only takes one hour is more accurate than the one that takes two hours to get the result. That’s a good question.

Spike gets home, and says she’s not hungry, because she’s super tired. Her mom says that’s all the more reason she should actually eat something. Her mom spots the bag and asks what’s in it. Spike quickly puts it behind her back, saying it’s nothing. Wrong answer. Now Spike’s mom is REALLY curious as to what’s in the bag that Spike feels the need to hide. Here’s some better answers: “Uh, just something for school” or “Well I know your birthday/Mother’s Day/Christmas’s coming up, and I saw this and thought of you, so I can’t show it to you just yet, you just have to wait, okay?” Unfortunately panic overrides logic for most people, especially fictional characters.

Spike runs upstairs to her room, and her mother goes after her, and asks what’s in the bag. When Spike says it’s none of her business, Spike’s mom says maybe it isn’t, but she still wants to know what the heck’s been going on with Spike lately. Spike’s all “You don’t care about me! You don’t care about how I think or feel! You don’t know what it’s like to be 14!” Then she throws her pregnancy test at her mom.

Shane calls, and Spike’s mom says Spike will call him back. Then she sits down to talk with Spike. The next day, they go to the clinic. Spike thinks it would’ve been better to just take the pregnancy test, but Spike’s mom says the doctor is more accurate or something, and anyway if it turns out Spike isn’t pregnant, she should still talk the doctor if she’s planning on being sexually active from then on. Spike also mentions that she didn’t like the sex the one time she had it. And now she’s pregnant. That sucks. I liked that episode of That 70s Show where Donna and Eric lose their virginities to each other, and it turns out neither of them liked it very much, and then Donna goes around and talks to some of the other women on the show about their own first times, and all of them say theirs were terrible as well.

So also, Spike actually told Shane about the clinic visit, and he’s shown up. Spike’s mom doesn’t like that Shane is there, but Spike echoes Joey’s earlier sentiment about how it’s his baby too. They head in to the clinic for the results.

While they’re getting the results, we cut to Yick and Melanie ice skating. That’s the end of the Yick/Melanie subplot.

After that strange interlude, it turns out Spike is indeed pregnant.

Some time later, at school, Spike and Shane talk. Spike says this is all Shane’s fault. Shane says Spike could’ve stopped him if she wanted. Spike apparently tried to, sort of [that's seriously what she says].

Spike doesn’t know what to do. Maybe adoption, because there’s lot of people who want babies but can’t have them, people who are not junior high students. Then she brings up the possibility of an abortion. Shane objects, saying “You can’t kill a baby!” Spike counters by pointing out that it’s not a baby, it’s a fetus. Shane says “It’s alive, it’s got rights!” Spike I think wins by saying “But what about my rights?”

Spike wonders why all of this has to be happening. It was just a small mistake, she says. Shane ends the episode by saying “A big mistake.” Yeah maybe you should’ve freaking thought of all this before you went and had sex you mook.

Now, in order to keep this blog as, erm… friendly as possible, I would like to avoid an abortion debate, at least not until the abortion episodes. But since Shane and Spike brought it up, here are some artist’s renderings of a “baby” at the end of the first month of pregnancy:

I’m not sure, but this one might be a real photo rendering or something rather than an entirely CGI construction. Obviously it can’t be a real photo since it’s so oddly lit.

I would have to agree with you if you find the fetus looks more like some kind of mutant baby fish monster than a human baby at this point. Its organs have begun developing, along with its legs and arms, and tail, but I don’t think any of them are really functional. The extent to which the brain has developed at this point, I don’t think the little fetus would feel any pain even if you stabbed it or made it watch the last four seasons of How I Met Your Mother. [BOOM]

But anyway, this is just the beginning of the long journey poor Spike goes on, with people telling her what she should do with her body, her child, and her life.

Now, sorry for spoiling anything, but for fans of Degrassi: TNG, the fetus Spike is carrying now does grow up to be Emma of TNG. I saw TNG before I saw DJH, so I wasn’t surprised Spike got pregnant or anything. And now neither are you. Also Spike and Emma haven’t even been on Degrassi: TNG in like five years. Wow.

Also Spike’s mom both looks and sounds a lot like Alexa. They don’t seem to be related, though. The actresses, I mean. The characters aren’t related.

“Parents’ Night” April 5, 1987

The apostrophe is like that on the DVD cover. I think technically it is the more grammatically correct placement.

It’s Wheels’s birthday and his mom is lipsynching to opera. She also says Wheels listens to terrible rock music, sand that’s why she got him a good record – the South Pacific movie soundtrack. Wheels is a 13 year old straight boy in 80s Canada, so that’s understandably not his kind of music.

Someone calls the house. Wheels picks up, but no one answers. We see a gloved hand on the phone that’s calling. Someone is going to murder Wheels… DURING PARENTS’ NIGHT OH NOOO.

SNOW. IN CANADA?? On Degrassi: TNG it snows like twice, once in a Christmas episode and throughout the Hollywood movie to contrast Canada and Los Angeles where it certainly is always beautiful and sunny and warm and it never gets cold there ever… Although I guess to a Canadian, Southern California probably feels like the sun, eh?

Wheels is bragging to someone about all his cool birthday stuff, then he reveals that he, Joey, and Snake are in a band now. Joey plays keyboard, Wheels plays either guitar or bass, and Snake plays either bass or guitar. This is really interesting, though, because Snake has pretty much never interacted with Wheels or Joey before this point. I think the most interaction they’ve had is when Snake told Melanie that Joey gives him a hard time a lot, and that barely counts because Joey wasn’t even in that scene AND we’ve never seen Joey give Snake a hard time anyway.

Anyhow, Snake suggests they call the band “Snake and the Charmers” which would be a really sweet band name if only Wheels and Joey were actually charming. Also it turns out Wheels got poor marks on his report card. Too bad, eh? Oh and there was this creepy mondo 80s guy hanging around outside the school. Snake thought he seemed like he wanted to talk to Wheels, but Wheels doesn’t know him, so Snake says he’ll tell the office about the guy if he’s still there later. Most kids wouldn’t do anything if there was some weird pedo guy hanging around outside the school. Snake is a good kid.

Joey forgot to have his parents sign his report card, so he’s forging the signature. Also Joey has a name for the band – “Joey and the Joybuzzers”. Wheels thinks Snake will hate the name. I think everyone will. That’s a terrible name. What’s a joybuzzer supposed to be?? And finally, this paragraph took place entirely in the bathroom, as always.

Spike’s still concerned over what to do about the baby. She doesn’t want to be a mother, but doesn’t want to get an abortion. Also Shane’s still a jerk and won’t talk to her.

Raditch receives Joey’s report card with the forged signature. Raditch asks what Joey’s parents thought of his grades, and says he’s looking forward to talking to them that evening at Parents’ Night – which is also when the school talent show that Snake and the Buzzkills or whatever are performing in.

In the hallway, Snake advises Joey to forge a note that would supposedly be from his parents, explaining they were unable to attend and whatever.

Meanwhile, the twins encourage Spike to talk to Wheels. It turns out Wheels is actually adopted, so the twins think it would be good for Spike to ask him what it’s like, so she can figure out if adoption is right for her and her baby. Spike is afraid of adoption because what if her baby goes to someone awful? One of the twins points out that, well, if she doesn’t want to keep the baby and doesn’t want an abortion, what other choice does she have? I mean there’s a few extra options there, but all of them are pretty gruesome so I will move on to the next scene.

Rehearsals for the talent show are going on. That screenshot is all I can tell you about that “talent.” I mean, they sing, and one of the kids is Arthur, but I can’t tell you what exactly it is that’s supposed to be happening. I’m not even sure who the other kid is. I thought it might be Caitlin, but looking at the screenshot, I’m not so sure.

Backstage, Derek Wheeler and the News are talking about where they’ll film their music video for their song. Joey wants it on top of a building, but Snake says that’s overdone. He wants to do it in a studio with smoke machines and dancing girls. Wheels suggests they practice the song before they worry about making a music video. He’s also wearing an awesome reindeer sweater. Apparently it’s December right now.

Spike rudely interrupts their rehearsal to ask Wheels about being adopted. She asks if he ever wonders about his birth parents, if he knows anything about them, and if he’s mad at them for giving him up. Wheels says: Sometimes, just that they were too young to take care of him, and not really. Wheels has to leave to go on stage for rehearsal, and tells Spike to ask if she has any more questions. Wheels is surprisingly cool.

Joey Jeremiah and the Raiders play something terrible on stage. It’s basically them hitting random notes in sequence, it’s not even a song.

Still, they all think they did well, and skip out into the snow. Creepy mustache guy is still there, and he actually talks to Wheels. It turns out he’s actually Wheels’s biological father. Boy, talk about a coincidence that he shows up immediately after Spike was asking Wheels about him!

Unfortunately not this Mike Nelson.

Um it turns out his name is Mike Nelson, even though Spike’s last name is also Nelson although maybe they haven’t mentioned that yet. Wheels’s birth name was also Michael Nelson. Now it’s Derek Wheeler. Mike Nelson also tells Wheels to call him whenever.

*Nelson Muntz voice* Haha!

The next day at school, Joey and Snake have a fight about the name of their band. Snake still thinks the Environment Action Committee is a good… wait, no.

Anyway Joey is talking about how they’re going to go on tour, but Snake doesn’t know if he can miss that much school. They have like 1/3 of one song so far, but sure.

Wheels tells the guys about how the creepy guy was his father. Joey laments the fact that he wasn’t adopted, because his parents are super boring. Hahah, what. Joey’s dumb. But they convince Wheels to call his father.

He does, and they get chocolate milkshakes. It’s hereditary or something. Mike tells Wheels a bit about his birth mother, and how the two of them were just 16 when they had Wheels, and couldn’t take care of him. Mike isn’t supposed to know where Wheels is or who adopted him, but he found out somehow and kept checking the phonebook to make sure Wheels was still in Toronto. Eh… that’s a little creepy.

“Mr. Discount”

Creepy Mike Nelson

Um it also turns out Mike is in a band with his loser 30 year old friends, and Wheels arranges a date to see them. It turns out his adoptive father got two tickets to see this group called the Gourmet Scum, but the concert’s the same day that Wheels is seeing his biological father’s band! Which lame band will he go to?!

He tells Mr. Wheeler that he can’t go because he has a rehearsal with his own band, and it’s super important and stuff. Mr. Wheeler is sad.

Spike is yelling at Shane in the stairwell, meanwhile Snake has a new name for the band – “Snake and the Sneeze.” That’s officially the worst band name I’ve ever heard. And I’m including “Sex Michalchuk and the Sex Kittens”, “Hell Hath No Fury”, “The Justin Bieber Experience,” and the band names I came up with as jokes earlier in this post.

After school, Wheels goes to see birth father. Mike’s bandmates are like “Aww, is this your kid?” and Mike’s like “Yeah, he’s totally mine!” Wheels gets really upset about this, saying he doesn’t belong to Mike, that he was a mistake anyway, and why did Mike even come here to bother him in the first place? Wheels walks home in a huff.

He finds his adoptive parents waiting for him. Turns out, right after Wheels left, Mike phoned them to apologize. Uh-oh, Wheels, the jig is… up… now your adoptive parents will know your birth father contacted you so you can get to know each other… Eh… Okay, I can see how “wondering about the birth parents” might cause some strain, hurt feelings, whatever for adoptive families, but… okay.

Anyway Mr. Wheeler says Wheels shouldn’t feel guilty about wanting to know about his birth family. Mrs. Wheeler says they’ll always love him. Wheels somehow takes this to mean that they want to give him up, and he says he doesn’t care about his dumb biological father anyway.

New band names: “Joey and the Jellybeans” and “Snake and the Snaps.”

Raditch tells Joey that the note his parents totally wrote was so touching, he called Joey’s parents. Of course, Joey’s parents didn’t know a thing about the note, and can’t wait to discuss it at Parents’ Night – which is spelled Parent’s Night on a poster so I don’t know what to believe in anymore.

Spike and Shane continue their argument from earlier. Shane says Spike didn’t make the baby alone, so he deserves some input. Spike says… something, and Shane’s all “I thought you liked me.” She still does, but having babies is hard. So they break up, I guess. I don’t really understand what they’ve been fighting about. It seemed like in the last episode, Spike wanted support from Shane. So now Shane is trying to give her some input to help her decide what to do, and she’s all “Don’t tell me how to live my life!” Teenagers, amiright?

Also Spike talks to Wheels again and says she’s worried if she chooses adoption, what happens if she loves the baby too much to give it up? And if she did give it up for adoption, she’d like to meet the kid later on, to explain why it is she gave the baby up. She asks Wheels if he thinks that’s wrong of her. Wheels doesn’t think so. I guess Wheels just learned something about his creepy, mustachioed birth father.

There’s like 3 minutes left in this episode and Parents’ Night hasn’t even happened yet.

Wheels goes to see Mike play. His band is terrible. No saxophone? No flute? What kind of rock band is this??

Wheels showed up to talk to Mike to tell him he doesn’t want to talk to him.

Okay he adds that he’d like to talk to him some time later, but not for a while. Mike’s cool with that. Wheels also asks if he can have the birth necklace that Mike gave to him but that he threw back at Mike for implying Wheels belonged to him. Then the episode ends.

We didn’t see any of Parents’ Night at all.

When Degrassi:TNG did Parent’s Night, we did actually see a lot of it. Most of it was focused on a divorced couple arguing over who ruined their child the most. It was kind of intense.

The boys still didn’t settle on a band name. You know what would be a good band name? “Who’s On First”. It would be part The Who cover band and part vaudeville comedy act. I think “Headless Mistress” and “The Plague” would be good names for mediocre grunge/punk/rockabilly/soft cabaret bands.

Oh that reminds me – The Gourmet Scum may or may not be a real band. When I Googled it, most of the results were Degrassi pages, but there’s also a couple music videos on Youtube by The Gourmet Scum. So I don’t know if they named themselves after the Degrassi band or if it’s a coincidence.

Ah, and a final note – the actress who played Spike is actually adopted. Not super relevant, but still interesting, I think.

This is it, guys. The first season finale. This is possibly the tamest Degrassi season finale ever. Most of the other ones have people graduating, fires at the school dance, stabbings, shootings, characters going crazy after taking drugs… I mean The Next Generation does have some pretty tame season finales as well. That reminds me, I wonder why no one has yet come across this blog after searching for other shows that end in “The Next Generation”. I’m pretty sure there have been a handful of people who got here after searching for Bayerische Motoren Werke – aka BMW the vehicle company rather than BMW the abbreviation for Boy Meets World. I may or may not have intended for that to happen.

After telling Snake about band rehearsal, Joey rushes after Stephanie to be totally charming or whatever. Stef’s a bit annoyed at him, and tells him to leave her alone – not in a “get away from me, creep!” tone, but more in an exasperated teenage girl tone. I feel it is important to make this distinction. Steph also mentions to the twins that Joey’s the kind of guy she would never go out with in a million years. Huh… so back in the first episode when she was campaigning to be school president, was she just using Joey and his obvious affection for her?

So exams are coming up. The 7th graders are quizzing each other. Arthur asks Yick where the Zambezi river is. Yick’s got this – it’s in Africa. Easy. Kathleen however points out that the entire test is about Africa, so that answer probably won’t cut it on the test.

Hey you know one really great thing about adulthood? No final exams. I mean, preparing for job interviews, doing taxes, and balancing your budget are pretty sucky, but at least you don’t have to cram for a biology exam. I always hated biology. There’s so much stuff to remember, plus my biology teachers would always treat you like you were an idiot if you were having trouble understanding something. The only good thing about my second biology teacher is that part of our grade was doing this workbook thing, but she never checked it herself and just had us grade it. So you could get away with not ever doing it at all and she’d never know. You’d do poorly on the tests since the workbook was supposed to help teach you, though.

That biology teacher also once shared a “fact” that Calico cats are always male. I don’t know if she was trying to test us or if the biology teacher just got an incredibly basic fact wrong, because it’s the females that are always Calico (apparently rarely some males are Calico, but they’re usually sterile and “generally have impaired vitality”.)

Wow, so, back to the episode:

Arthur tells Stephanie as she walks by to tell mom he’ll be home later on Saturday or something. When did it suddenly become well-known that Arthur and Stephanie are siblings? Last time it came up, Stephanie still didn’t want anyone to know.

Kathleen makes a comment about Stephanie always changing clothes at school. Kathleen’s always making comments about other people at school, so… okay. Also Stephanie still likes Wheels. Plus Melanie’s wearing that awesome sheep sweater again.

Joey wants to call the band “Joey and the Jet-sets”. Wheels and Snake think that’s dumb. Also all three of them are wearing the same clothes they had on in the last episode. Is this the same day?

Snake and Wheels want to call the band “The Zit Remedy”, anyway. There it is, guys. That’s the name.

Steph asks Wheels if he wants to go out on Friday or whenever. Wheels can’t, he has to study. What a lame-o. Raditch comes in and says he hopes everyone has been studying, especially Joey, because he doesn’t want to see Joey in his class again next year. A couple things: 1) It’s only December, so they’re just doing mid-terms. Obviously they should try to do well on them, but would doing poorly on the mid-term really mean they have to repeat their grade next year? 2) Joey does end up having to repeat 8th grade, so Mr. Raditch freaking jinxed it.

There’s an opening for a new Sports Rep at school. Suzie, Kathleen, and Melanie tell Yick he should go out for Sports Rep. Sports Rep is always a 7th grader, and Yick is in 7th grade! It’s a match! Plus Yick played basketball in that one episode.

Yick tries to talk to Steph about being Sports Rep, but she tells him she’s busy and they’ll talk next term. The grade 7s will not stand for this.

And now, 7 minutes into the 13th episode of the 1st season of Degrassi, we have the first appearance of that famous Zit Remedy song “Everybody Wants Something.” It’s a dumb song, but extremely catchy. It’s been stuck in my head for 8 years.

Steph shows up at rehearsal and asks Joey if he wants to be Sports Rep. Wheels protests, since Joey isn’t a 7th grader, and isn’t on a sports team, and doesn’t even like sports. Still, Steph insists, since she’s using the Sports Rep thing to get back at Wheels… somehow.

Yick finds out about Joey being the new Sports Rep, and tells the other 7th graders about it. They all find this extremely unjust, not only because the position is traditionally supposed to be filled by a 7th grader, but because now the student council has four 8th graders and only two 7th graders, and there’s supposed to be an actual election for the Sports Rep position, rather than the president just appointing someone.

The 7th graders start making anti-Stephanie posters in protest. There’s a brief montage of other students discussing the protest. Yick and Suzie say Steph is a terrible president and only got elected because she let boys kiss her. Voula points out that she does go to student council meetings but LD argues that’s not enough, and that she can’t just give Joey the Sports Rep job because she likes him. Alex (Alex is not the same person as Alexa) recalls how Steph was drunk at the school dance, Nancy (who I’ve never mentioned before because she’s barely done anything) also remembers all the promises Steph made but she hasn’t made good on any of them. Rick encourages people to sign a petition to impeach Stephanie. It’s not every day there’s a school-wide protest to impeach the student council president.

Because if that did happen every day, that would be ridiculous.

The Zit Remedy rehearses, but Wheels has to leave so he can study. Joey rags on him about how Steph likes him (Joey) now and Wheels is jealous or whatever. Wheels calls him an idiot.

The 7th graders are planning to jump Stephanie in the alleyway or something.

Wheels is browsing the French section of the library. I mean all the books are in French. Everyone on this show is fluent in French. Or Quebecoise or whatever.

Anyway he overhears the twins talking about him. One twin thinks it’s super crappy of Stephanie to be using Joey like that to make Wheels jealous. The other twin accuses her of liking Wheels. She loudly denies it. No one says “Methinks the lady doth protest too much”, which incidentally is not exactly how that line goes (the “methinks” is supposed to go at the end, but I’ve never heard anyone say it at the end), but I certainly think…s the lady doth protest too much, and certainly not because I’ve seen all the other episodes.

Mr. Raditch appears to have lost the tests. Now who’s Mr. Yu the Disorganized??

Wheels tells Joey that Stephanie is just using him. Joey tells him he’s just jealous and is trying to mess him up before the exam.

Raditch is looking for a copy of his test in the office when Lucy shows up. She needs a copy of her attendance record to give to her social worker. Her court date for the shoplifting incidence isn’t until spring, but she needs the attendance now, I guess. Also she has a Kansas University  sweater for some reason. That reminds me of a terrible show called “Too Close for Comfort” where the main character always had a different college sweater on every episode, because he wore a few in the early episodes and people started sending more to the production company. I oughtta do a review of that show some day.

Also while the receptionist and Lucy are talking, Raditch is just throwing papers all over the place, which is hilarious. It’s cool seeing Raditch so ruffled for once.

After a while, Raditch, breathless and limping, returns to his classroom, and writes all the test questions on the board. Then there’s like a minute of footage that’s just of people taking tests. Joey’s obviously struggling with his own test.

After the test, Joey asks the twins if Stephanie’s just using him. One says yes, the other says no, but then they’re both like “Yeah…” Joey’s conscience kicks in right then. He’s off to make things right.

Meanwhile, the 7th graders decide to wait for Stephanie at the girl’s washroom since she always goes there after school. They all chant “Out of the Way with Stephanie Kaye!” outside the bathroom. Suzie, the school vice-president, issues a formal grievance with Stephanie about Joey being appointed Sports Rep.

Joey, who is still wearing the denim jacket Rick sold him, shows up just then. He tells Stephanie that he quits, he doesn’t want to be Sports Rep anymore. The 7th graders cheer. Stephanie storms into the bathroom and puts her clothes on angrily. “I just wanted everybody to like me,” she says. She has a flashback to the first episode where she told Arthur she was too cool to hang out with him since she’s in 8th grade, he’s in 7th, and to her election campaign. She starts crying in real time as she rubs her makeup off.

She comes out of the school and asks Arthur if he wants to walk home with her. Arthur tells her he doesn’t think that junior high is so bad after all, and he’s looking forward to next semester. Stephanie is as well. She’s planning on being herself next term. Arthur asks if that means he’s allowed to talk to her in school again. When she says yes, he asks if that means they can also watch the tv shows he wants to watch once in a while. “Sometimes,” she says. Then he asks if he can borrow her stereo, and she tells him to push his luck, then flips his scarf up.

So I think this episode was about how if you try to make someone jealous, the entire 7th grade will hate you. Good to know.

This season was pretty tame, really. I mean, there was child abuse and teen pregnancy and the fear of a parent dying, but most of it was about being hated by the teacher, being embarrassed about being flat-chested, being afraid of snakes, shoplifting, and choosing names for your band. Degrassi maintains a long tradition of having pretty tame problems mixed in with the 100% intense stuff like suicide and gonorrhea.

I’m going back and forth right now as to if I want to keep doing 4 episodes of DJH each weekend, or 2 DJH and 2 Degrassi:TNG. On the one hand, there’s SO many TNG episodes to get through so I kind of want to start now. On the other hand, that will mean I’m putting up four shows every week, 5 when Girl Meets World starts airing regularly in July. Now THAT is 100% intense.

There’s a few things in TNG that would be spoilers for DJH and Degrassi High, but not a huge number of them. Maybe every other week could have TNG posts or something. I’ll think about it.

Bonus!

Degrassi Talks… On Sex

They obviously included this episode on this disc because of the whole pregnancy thing. Once again, I’ll be doing the highlights rather than a full recap.

Spike’s hair deflated!

• I still can’t understand most of the words to the theme song.
• Wouldn’t the title s of the episodes make more sense as “…about [topic]” so it’s “Degrassi Talks… About Sex” rather than “On Sex”?
• One woman, Vicky, was pressured into sex by her long-time boyfriend and got pregnant on her first time when she was just 13. Her mom hadn’t really explained birth control because she thought 13 was young enough she didn’t have to worry about it.
• Some women share crazy contraceptive things – like you can’t have sex if you take a cold shower right afterwards, or if you splash your lady-parts with Coca Cola.
• One girl got pregnant even though the guy used a condom. She decided to get an abortion, but regrets it now. She feels like she shouldn’t have to explain herself to anyone, but mentions that she’d at least glad she didn’t bring an unwanted child into the world, because there’s so many unwanted children already. She acknowledges that her feelings are complicated on the issue.
• Vicky is featured again, as they talk about how much work a baby is and how she doesn’t ave any time for friends or anything else. She says she doesn’t like the baby’s dad at all, because all he does is buy the kid toys sometimes and never does anything else. Vicky is clearly very angry about her life. If she were on 16 and Pregnant she for sure would be one of the girls who ends the episode crying and wishing she’d never had sex in the first place.
• One guy says he thinks other guys get really freaked out about having to raise babies and that’s why the bail.
• The Degrassi crew actually finds a teen father who’s helping take care of the baby. It was difficult finding a teen father, which supports the statistics they give that 79% of teen mothers are single.
• One 17 year old woman never uses a condom when she has sex. She’s had so many STDs that she’s now infertile. She’s sad that she can never have any children. Also to note, she doesn’t look gross at all. She looks totally normal, just really sad.
• One guy who was in the sexuality episode is shown giving a talk on condoms and stuff, including the very true fact that Vaseline is a terrible lubricant because it can cause condoms to break really easily. He talks about how he was diagnosed HiV-positive two year prior.
• Another guy says he doesn’t use condoms but if the girl wants to, that’s up to her and he doesn’t mind. The actress who plays Spike (Amanda Stepto) asks “What about disease?” He answers “What disease?”
• One girl says schools ought to have condom dispensers because it can be super embarrassing to go buy them at the store, and if people are too embarrassed they might not buy them.
• The actor who played Joey (Pat Mastroianni) holds the baby of the one teen father. She immediately cries in his arms. The teen father talks about how it’s really hard because the mother can’t get a job quite yet (because the baby’s only like a month or two old), and it’s just difficult in general for a teenager to get a job that will make enough money to support a family.
• They talk to one couple who has an active, healthy sex life that employs protection. The woman in the couple says her mother was really open about sex, and told her to come talk to her whenever she was ready to start having sex. The woman says she also “just knew” she was ready for sex, and wasn’t pressured into it.

Degrassi Talks… On Drugs

This is the Degrassi Talks episode I forgot about that’s on the first disc of the set, probably due to that one episode where Joey becomes a fake drug dealer by giving Melanie and Kathleen vitamin pills under the name of “New Zealand Zappers” or whatever. The drug problems in this Degrassi Talks are a bit more intense.

Camera man filming Amanda who is filming the camera man.

• Maybe teenagers take drugs because they aren’t supposed to, theorizes one young lady
• One girl talks pretty casually about doing drugs because older, cool people were doing them, and says they did cocaine but they were only injecting it and not snorting it so I guess that makes it okay.
• The general consensus is that drugs make you feel good and it’s fun. A few people mention drugs are also addictive, but it seems like most people didn’t mention that.
• One girl’s mom told her if she ever started doing drugs, the mom wanted to be there, and the she pulled out crack or something and made the girl take it right then. What in the actual heck.
• One guy mentions a list of side effects of huffing glue. They include “loss of memory and memory loss.”
• This show always has parts where the actors are like “My character on the show experienced something similar, how was it for you?” This is especially ridiculous in this episode, where the one actress talks about her character taking caffeine pills to the guy who talked about taking like every other drug on the market. He mentions he took Ritalin, though, despite not needing it, so it made him all crazy. Jimmy on Degrassi: TNG also took Ritalin pills when he didn’t need to. He broke Sean’s leg, but Sean was better by the next episode, which means either Jimmy is really weak or Sean is immortal.
• The girl whose mom made her do crack or whatever, it turns out is a crack baby as well. The mom thought she was going into labor, the doctor said she wasn’t due for a few weeks, so the mom went home, shot up some crack, then that made her go into labor so the girl was born addicted to crack.
• One guy they were talking to about drugs asks the actor who played Yick why he smokes, since cigarettes are addictive and also a kind of drug or whatever. Yick’s actor says that kind of startled him to be asked that, and he says he doesn’t know why he smokes. He knows smoking is bad, but he just does it anyway. He advises us not to start if we are non-smokers.
• Less kids are doing drugs these days (1992) than in the past, so it means kids are finder better, safer ways to get high. They interview a bunch of people who say bike riding/video games/talking to mom are ways they get high. Looking at butts is my way to get high.
• They end with one guy who hopes once he gets out of jail or rehab he won’t go back to doing drugs.

This episode was lame. I know drugs are bad, pretty much everyone watching this probably knew that already. They didn’t interview anyone who was like “Oh yeah I did drugs and then while I was high I drove and I killed someone,” or interviewed a total meth-head who was all scabby and shaking or whatever. THAT would be way more interesting and effective than “Yeah, I do drugs. It’s fun.”

Bonus 2

The DVD set comes with a 28-page PDF of educational supplements to the episodes. They all have a synopsis, class questions, activities, and suggested reading. Some of the acitivities are great, like “Have the students write a poem about what it’s like being a teenager” and “have kids role-play a scene in which Shane is pressuring Spike to have sex.” It also says “Joey wants to be seen as a cool dude”, which I can only read in the voice of the school secretary/receptionist from Ferris Bueller.

Gosh, finding the Ferris Bueller tv show online would be great. Definitely, if I ever find them, I’ll do at least one post on the Ferris Bueller tv show , and the Little Shop of Horrors and Teen Wolf cartoons.

I should talk some about how they made Degrassi, but I’ll save that for 201 and 202.

What a long title.

After not caring about his breakup in the previous episode, Cory suddenly cares about his breakup in this episode.

Also the opening credits are the same as they were in the first twelve episodes of the season, so I think that last time was really just because whatever channel was syndicating the reruns just used the opening credits from season 4 or whenever.

Anyway.

Shawn, wearing a dining chair upholstery cover, objects to Cory talking to Cory. It turns out Cory and Topanga are actually modeling formalwear for the prom that coming Friday or Saturday or whatever. Cory says he can’t just back out of it, because he made a promise. And Topanga doesn’t seem to find it awkward, so… yeah.

Shawn asks out Katie and Melissa for him and Cory. They agree. Boy I can’t wait until they become super developed characters over the next coming episodes!

Feeny’s gardening in the dark, and is around to see Eric read yet another college rejection letter. Feeny tells him basically that the right college will find him eventually. Remember, this was 1996, so it was actually worth it for most people to go to college.

Cory says something about his upcoming get-together with Katie or Melissa. Amy and Eric say it sounds like a date, but Cory disagrees. Then, shock of all shocks, he mentions Morgan. He asks why they can’t be like her. She’s a great sister, stays up in her room all quiet, never bugs him…

Yet more shockingly, Morgan comes downstairs.

It’s a different, older actress than the one who played Morgan last time we saw her. She says “That was the longest time-out I’ve ever had!” See it’s funny, because she hasn’t been on the show since like April 1995.

It’s immediately clear that New Morgan is annoying. Old Morgan was cute and acted like the 5 year old she was. New Morgan is obnoxious and needlessly mean. She makes fun of Cory right away. Amy makes her watch tv in the living room, and Morgan says she doesn’t want to watch tv. TV isn’t funny, Cory’s life is funny. Which itself is funny because Cory’s life is on tv!

Umm Shawn and either Katie or Melissa have a good time on the date, but Cory’s really nervous about his part of the date with Melissa or Katie. At the end of the night, Cory shakes her hand rather than kissing her or anything.

The next day, it turns out she actually liked that Cory didn’t try to kiss her. Proves he’s different from other guys. She wants to go out with him again. And she’s wearing a big velvet hat with a big flower on it.

NINETEEN-NINETIES.

After the date, Shawn still thinks Cory’s ridiculous for still not kissing Melissa. Cory explains that every time he tried, he just kept thinking about Topanga. He’s not over Topanga, and he decides Topanga isn’t over him either.

Oh, I guess she is.

Meanwhile, Eric got an acceptance letter from Boris College. Feeny has never heard of this place, but I guess the letter looked legitimate.

Shawn tells Cory there’s no issue with Topanga moving on, because that’s what you’re supposed to do. Cory takes this boldly and runs to Melissa’s house. They kiss passionately.

It turns out they don’t actually have any sparks between each other, and both of them are just like “Oh well. See you in school tomorrow!”

At school the next day, Cory jumps on blond mop-tops back. Topanga’s all “Why are you like this, everybody’s staring!” Cory’s like “Well it didn’t seem to bother you last night at Chubbie’s to have everyone staring at you!” The audience “oooooooh”s and Topanga goes all wide-eyed. “You saw that?”

The bells rings, and Topanga says she has to get to class. Cory says when they were still dating, she would’ve been okay with being 5 minutes late. But they’re not dating, so…

It turns out Boris College doesn’t really exist. Eric already knew that, because the school mailed him a diploma a couple days after he got the acceptance letter. Feeny wonders why he kept bragging about being accepted there since he knew it was fake. Eric says he just wanted to feel special or something.

Cory throws out Topanga-related souvenirs while a Maxwell House coffee can watches in the background.

His parents tell him to call down, and that he shouldn’t throw out their friendship just because Topanga’s dating other people a whole two weeks after their break-up.

They’re holding the fashion show in the cafeteria. Or the hallway. Wow.

Cory actually shows up to the fashion show. Yay, Cory! Topanga says it hurt her feelings when Cory said he didn’t want to be her friend anymore. I guess I wasn’t paying attention during that part. Cory says it sure didn’t make him feel great when he saw her kissing that guy.

Topanga says she doesn’t feel the same way about him as she did about Cory, and dating other people and moving on is just what they’re supposed to do. Cory disagrees, saying he’s supposed to see other people and she’s just supposed to wait until he dies. Um, then they patch things up so they’re friends again.

Topanga thanks Cory for coming, and Cory says he’d never not be there for her.

THAT SWEATER WINS THE EPISODE.

Morgan is filling out college applications. Eric asks why, since she’s only in 3rd grade even though she was in pre-school last season. She says it’s because if an idiot like him can get into college, so can she. He asks “Isn’t it time you bothered somebody else?” and she realizes it is time. She heads upstairs, calling “Corrryyy! I’m in your rooooom!” That’s really stupid, because that’s also Eric’s room, so she should technically still be bothering Eric. I hate New Morgan. Why did they do this? Were audiences really saying “We love the show, but I think it would be better if Morgan was 3 years old and a total jerk”? Nothing against the actress, my gripe is with the creative decision and writing. Plus this makes it really weird for if they’re ever going to include Morgan in Girl Meets World, which actress? New Morgan was on the show longer, but Old Morgan was the original Morgan.

Eh, well, Feeny shows up just then. Eric says he decided that for every rejection letter he gets, he’ll write 5 more applications. That’s a lot of work. Eric should work on his community service or something instead, so he’ll have something to make up for his poor grades. But anyway, Feeny wrote him a great recommendation letter. Eric’s a little upset because he already sealed 5000 envelopes that won’t have that letter in them.

Somewhat relevant, but I always loved how Roseanne handled having a new actress for an old character. See, the actress who played oldest daughter Becky went to college, so they brought in a new actress (Sarah Chalke of Scrubs fame, also Stella on How I Met Your Mother). When Sarah Chalke’s Becky showed up, all the characters were like “Who are you?” and Roseanne says something about how her oldest daughter’s been away so long she’s barely recognizable.

Then, bizarrely, a few seasons later, the original actress for Becky came back, replacing Sarah Chalke. And then Sarah Chalke came back. The two actresses alternated the role for a while until Sarah Chalke took over until the end. There’s a line in the Disney World episode after Becky expresses excitement, Roseanne says “Aren’t you glad you’re here this week?”

A lot of people though the alternating Beckies was weird and annoying, but I thought it was pretty funny, and a good way to address something that was pretty obvious.

Bonus:

I have GOT to review the show this clip is from. It’s got Marie Osmond and Betty White in it. Plus the main character voiced Terra on the Teen Titans cartoon! And Gwen from Ben 10 but I’ve never seen that show.

Also, Cory, Shawn, and Feeny’s voice appear at the end of the episode as well.

A while from now I’ll have to do a TGIF crossover week thing, since there was apparently one night where all the TGIF shows crossed over with each other.

It’s hyphenated that way in the DVD case. Speaking of which, the Glee season 1 DVD case is One of those terrible ones where they put all the episode and special feature information inside the cover, so you have to take the discs out of the case in order to see which episode is on which disc. LAME.

Also, before we dive in, I mentioned in the 100th Post that I’m planning on recapping The Glee Project in between Glee seasons 2 and 3, and 3 and 4. I’m thinking they’re going to be more along the lines of highlights rather than a full-on recap, because most of that show just involved people singing and there’s not even that much Reality Show Drama to cover. But I also have a special feature in mind to add to the Glee Project posts.

It’s so great seeing Schue actually having the kids rehearse.

But none of the kids are really into rehearsing. Except Rachel probably. Oh wait Rachel’s not there. Or did she join back up again?

Okay apparently she is there.

Schue says in flashback that they’re in really good shape  for Sectionals. They’re only facing two other groups, a school for girls fresh out of juvie, and a school for the deaf. It’s important to note that Schue’s comment has the implication that they’re lucky to only be facing two other schools, but every single other competition on the show has them facing only two other schools.

Sue shows up at that point and says she likes to keep her Cheerios fearful by randomly selecting one every week to kick off the squad. Keeps the remaining ones on their toes. Schue thinks this is a great idea, but sadly funnels this into having a boys vs girls competition for the Glee club, with the added condition that the songs have to be mashups, which is a term that was not widely used until October 7, 2009.

I was going to say something about Rachel’s outfit, but what is Quinn doing??

Rachel points out that Schue being a man makes him a biased judge, but Schue says they’ll have an additional, celebrity judge.

Sue writes in her journal about how earlier at cheerleading practice, she saw Quinn Fabray’s knees trembling while in formation. She’s afraid that quiver might cost them Nationals. When Quinn claims it’s because she’s tired from glee rehearsals, Sue resolves to destroy Glee Club… again. Except this time, she’s going directly after Will rather than the club in general.

Sue tells Terri that Will seems to be interested in a doe-eyed guidance counselor at school. She suggests an affair might be imminent. Terri, who was already afraid Will was going to leave her, is very worried about this. Sue says there happens to be an opening for school nurse, since the last one is in a coma.

Sue tripped an old lady down the stairs.

Terri isn’t a trained nurse, but claims she’s had First Aid training as the Sheets ‘N’ Things manager. And the school is desperate, so she’s in.

Meanwhile, Finn monologues about being tired all the time. He says it’s because football and glee club and worrying about Quinn being pregnant and being attracted to Rachel even though she’s insane (for real, Finn says she freaks him out). I say: Welcome to high school. Oh you’re tired all the time? Boo hoo. So is literally every other student. I know teen fatherhood is tough, but until you’ve suffered through a stress fever so hot you almost had to go to the hospital, I’m afraid I can’t be too sympathetic.

But seriously, a high school student having trouble staying awake during class? Stop the presses, this is a never-before-heard-of phenomenon!

Puck tells Finn he should just go see the school nurse if he’s so tired. Puck says he goes to the nurse and takes a three hour nap every day. He hasn’t taken a math class in two years.

New school nurse Terri gives him some pseudoephedrine tablets, to help perk him up and give him energy. He calls it Vitamin D and gives some to the other guys. They then perform a mashup of It’s My Life and Confessions Pt. II.

It’s a pretty great mashup, because the songs make sense together and the boys all sound pretty great, despite the fact that pretty much only Finn and Artie are singing. Mike Chang does some sweet dance moves, though.

The girls, who have all been completely unwilling to work, aside from Rachel, are a little shocked but only Rachel seems to care the boys were any good.

You know, I don’t think Will said they were actually winning a prize for this competition anyway. Also it’s weird that both groups aren’t doing their number on the same day.

Rachel talks to Quinn, who hasn’t been showing up to glee rehearsals lately. She tells Quinn that she knows what it’s like to be made fun of and alienated, and in a few months when Quinn’s cheerleading uniform no longer fits, she’ll know what it’s like to. But the glee club will always be there for her, so she should come back and try not to lose the only people who will be her friends in a few months. It’s actually very touching, especially because, as Quinn says, if Rachel was the pregnant one, Quinn would have totally tortured her. Rachel knows that, but still wants Quinn to come back.

Tanaka talks to Terri, and confirms her fear that Emma and Will are into each other. You know, it’s really sad, because Terri keeps acting like a crazy person, but Tanaka and Terri are right. Emma and Will are like emotionally cheating on their partners already, and by the end of the season, Will’s physically cheating, technically.

Terri says the solution is to have Tanaka propose to Emma. Would probably make more sense to just talk to Will about her fears and concerns that he’s been distancing himself from her over the past few months and she’s afraid he’s going to cheat on her.

Kurt tells the girls that the boys all took drugs, because Kurt identifies with the girls and actually tried to join the girl team earlier in the episode, which makes things honestly a bit confusing when later on he protests being called “Lady”. I mean it makes sense that he’d object to being bullied and called names, but it’s weird that he dresses in women’s clothing and his allegiance is with women and Tanaka proposes to Emma. In the staff break room. Have I mentioned his name is Ken Tanaka? Because it is. He got her a cubic zirconia engagement ring because he remembered hos affected she was by the movie Blood Diamond. That’s sweet, actually.

The girls do a mashup of Halo and Walkin on Sunshine, which I know better as the favorite song of Fry from Futurama. This mashup doesn’t work as well compositionally as the boys’ mashup. But they all look super cute and dance like crazy people, so that’s something. Plus Rachel wails on the final note, not Mercedes for once, which counts for something.

Oh also the “special celebrity guest judge” was just Emma.

Will asks Emma if she’s serious about marrying Tanaka. Emma’s like “Well, do you know of any other options I might have?”, obviously hoping he’d be all like “Yes I love you, run away with me!” Will doesn’t say that, but he does say that marrying someone because you figure he’s your last chance isn’t a great reason. Good point, Will.

Meanwhile, Quinn officially tells Terri she’ll give the baby to her. Terri worries what Finn will think, but Quinn says he’s the reason she’s giving the baby up. He’s already freaking out and she’s only like two months pregnant. Quinn tells Terri she’ll need to pay for baby vitamins and doctor’s visits. Terri says she’ll being paying for the baby for the next 18 years, Quinn can handle paying for it for 7 months.

Emma has some conditions for Ken. If they get married, she’d want to keep her last name, and stay living separately, and basically not act married at all. He’s a nice, kind guy, though, and Emma doesn’t want to lose her only chance at marriage or whatever.

Meanwhiler, Rachel and Finn have a chat about drugs. Rachel says the only fair thing to do is disqualify themselves for cheating.

It turns out Figgins knows about the drugs as well. Schue gets angry at her, like how can he trust her with a baby when she’s been acting as a drug dealer to teenagers. Actually he doesn’t say any of that, he just gets mad at Terri for always ruining whatever good thing is going on in his life. What. Okay 1) be more concerned that Terri was basically acting as a drug dealer, you selfish prick, 2) what exactly did Terri ruin here? She started giving the kids pepper-uppers because Finn was so anxious he was having trouble sleeping and couldn’t perform well in school. She was trying to help. By giving children completely legal drugs that they had an option to not take.

Figgins does say there will be consequences for Terri and Schue, but he only says this after Will tells Terri she ruins everything.

God, no wonder Terri’s so crazy. I mean if the emotional cheating weren’t enough, I mean… For real, what the heck has Terri done to Will that has somehow ruined everything good in his life? This is literally the first horrible thing she’s done that the audience and Will know about, and it wasn’t even that horrible. I mean school nurses aren’t supposed to administer anything more serious than Tums without a doctor’s note, but she was just trying to give some tired teenagers a pick-me-up because one of them was having trouble focusing and staying awake. It was the kid’s decisions to agree to take the stuff and perform while doped. This did not ruin anything. And, again, the consequences were only revealed after Will was all “gawd you ruin everything good in my life, Terri!” That’s not an exact quote – he says something about how whenever there’s a spark of good stuff in his life she turns it into a forest fire or puts it out or something – but why would you say that to your pregnant wife??

Look, Terri’s crazy, and she’s really crazy for basically buying a baby off a teenaged student of her husband’s, but I ham like 95% sympathetic to Terri in the Front 13 of this show. Will is a real douche to her.

Anyway, Terri’s fired from being school nurse, and Sue is officially appointed glee club co-director. And Rachel won’t take any more pseudoephedrine.

The end.

There were only two songs in this episode, so a “best/worst” thing is kind of pointless here.

Song count: 34 total songs / 26 full-length performances [Mashups are counted as one song each]